Club Dread

The Broken Lizard guys don't so much send up a genre as inhabit it, and subvert it from the inside.

This genre-busting hybrid is a scattershot affair - bad jokes land with a thud that seems to echo, but the winning ones prompt hearty laughs.

Works better than one might think, thanks to the group's modus operandi, which combines a fundamental reverence for the target material and a sly irreverence that's key to their skewering technique.

The film's biggest flaw is its excessive running time: The jokes start wearing thin after the first hour and, by the time the credits finally roll, it's become the kind of straightforward gorefest it started out ridiculing.

Mr. Chandrasekhar's direction is casual to the point of carelessness, but he does give the movie a friendly, convivial atmosphere that contradicts and sometimes overcomes its frequently cruel humor. In short, this is another film that looks as if it was more fun to make than it is to sit through.

About as funny as malaria.

Studios can release movies even more insultingly dumb, crudely assembled and cheaply produced than this one, though such an achievement will require some effort.

What a stupid movie. It was really hard to watch it till the end. Can't understand this high score.

The title fits perfectly: Watching "Club Dread" is a dreadful chore. Yes, humor is subjective, but apart from a few visual gags, nothing here really clicked. And after a quite amusing opening, virtually nothing happens on the horror and parody levels either. To give an example: The film's running gag is that an Indian man (Jay Chandrasekhar) has dreadlocks and speaks perfect Oxford English. Wow. And that's how all the 'jokes' turn out: They have a nice idea, but nothing happens. To make matters worse, the film runs for two hours during which not much happens. Broken Lizard comes across as a group of aging college kids who see themselves as frivolous jokers, but their gags couldn't even knock my grandma off her feet. Everyone in front of and behind the camera probably had the best time, but that doesn't translate to the audience at all.Conclusion: boring, annoying, a lot of wasted potential – skip!