Alyson Hannigan

Cancel this ’Date’

Humor is stood up in this seriously unfunny spoof

DATE MOVIE. With Alyson Hannigan, Adam Campbell. Directors: Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer (1:20 mins.). PG-13: Crude sexual humor.

"Comedy is hard," said Steve Martin. For the writers of "Date Movie," it’s apparently impossible.

This would-be spoof of date movies, from the writers of "Scary Movie," attempts jokes about everything from "When Harry Met Sally ..." to "Bridget Jones’ Diary" to "Meet the Fockers," and even throws in jokes about TV reality shows and Paris Hilton TV commercials, and - ka-boom! - every one of them is a bomb.

Not only that, every one is a stink bomb.

Flatulence, halitosis, cat crap, sweat, exploding zits and quite possibly the first-ever joke about the hygiene of vaginal thermometers are projectile-vomited off the screen.

Speaking of gynecological phenomena, Alyson Hannigan, the flute player from "American Pie," has the starring role of Julia Jones, a lovelorn 300-pound behemoth who goes through a ghetto chop-shop (don’t ask) and is rebuilt as a princess hottie ready to be claimed by her prince.

That would be Grant Fonckyerdoder (Adam Campbell), a Brit with blond locks and an ex-girlfriend (Sophie Monk) determined to pull him back. The main story line has Julia and Grant meeting their in-laws, with no end of bad knockoff focker jokes.

Here’s just one: When Grant repeats the scene where he knocks his future father-in-law’s mother’s urn off a mantel, it doesn’t contain her ashes but her shriveled corpse, which the family cat begins to hump.

(If you just laughed, put this newspaper down and beg forgiveness.)

The joke that even these lowbrow filmmakers may wish they had cut is one where Julia and Grant go on a first-date spree of "bum fighting." They beat up a homeless person and steal his bottle of wine.

The scene wouldn’t be funny even if we hadn’t been reading recent stories about random attacks on homeless people. But it wouldn’t make it quite so obvious how crass and untalented the writers are.