Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

Robin Hood: Men in Tights

Perhaps one of the reasons Mel Brooks only followed up this film with one more was that he was discovering that he wasn’t as funny as he used to be. Or was it that the gags he knew were the only ones he ever used.

There are amusing bits to Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Cary Elwes is an affable hero, but so often while I was watching this, I was reminded of another ’80s comedy: The Princess Bride (Robin Hood isn’t technically a 1980s film, but it sure feels like one). Perhaps its unreasonable to draw similarities between the two, but there seems to be a lot of similarities between the films tonally. The corrupt prince, the noble hero, the quirky aged wise man/woman. These commonalities are superficial, but the thrust, tone and pacing seems all too familiar.

Brooks’ jokes weren’t terribly funny and apart from a couple of zingers, the film moves from clumsy set-up to clumsy set-up without the characteristic playfulness that infused his ’70s work. Whatever the reason is that Robin Hood doesn’t work, it’s a disappointing turn for a director who used to have some of the best comedic timing in the business.

The Starving Games

Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer seem to be struggling to be funny, even in the guttural, base way their past films have showcased. The Starving Games is a woefully unfunny, unamusing attempt at building an audience off the back of a hugely popular film. While this isn’t necessarily a new motivation for them, it’s never been this obvious before, or this disappointing.

While I’ve never found their films remotely artistic, I’ve often enjoyed the utter childishness of their work. Their films provide the audience with mindless entertainment that deftly poked fun at popular culture and popular motion pictures. Perhaps their ties to the Scary Movie franchise colored their early work, but as they have moved beyond writing those films and got into directing them, it’s been a slow, inevitable slide into bland obscurity.

Is it that there is nothing left of popular culture that hasn’t been endlessly berated by spoofs in recent years? Or is the schtick growing old? Whatever the reason, I find myself increasingly distant from their corny goodness. I don’t think it’s a refinement of taste. My taste has always been broadly encompassing. Perhaps it’s just time for Friedberg and Seltzer to move on or at least completely reinvent themselves with something less obvious and routine.