Superfast! (2015)
8/10
A guilty pleasure
23 April 2015
Friedberg and Seltzer have carved a niche writing and directing guilty pleasures – parodies of films and genres that audiences seem to enjoy and that earn money, but which attract scathing reviews by self-important critics who consider themselves guardians of public cinematic tastes and standards.

At $20MM, "Superfast!" isn't exactly low-budget, except compared with the $190MM budget for "Furious 7." Much of the humor is low-brow, although perhaps not as low-brow as some of the humor in "Airplane!" It's more polished than typical direct-to-video fare, but lacks the polish of major theatrical releases. Compared with "Airplane!" the plot is more cohesive and less episodic, but that's a mixed blessing – some of the funniest bits in "Airplane!" (black coffee, pedophile pilot, wrong day to quit) didn't really propel the plot.

The filmmakers cast relatively unknown actors who resemble the Fast & Furious actors they parody, remarkably well in some cases. The actors generally do an excellent job, even when given silly things to do and things to say. They seem committed to their roles and never wink at the camera.

The movie is a series of ridiculous gags. It lacks subtlety. Character development is nonexistent. Transitions are nonsensical. Some of the jokes seem forced, while others aren't very funny. But a lot of the jokes work.

Overall, the movie is hilarious. The jokes are cheap, unsophisticated, sophomoric and juvenile, but there are a lot of them.

Perhaps too many of the characters are doofuses. Much of the humor seems deliberately constrained to target a teenage audience – they avoid raunchy jokes and one scene involving nudity is extensively blurred out when a Mike Myers/Austin Powers approach might have been much funnier. And much of the humor relies upon ridiculing the F&F franchise's ridiculous elements.

The film makes no effort to be cerebral and succeeds famously.
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