Date Movie is a 2006 movie by Seltzer and Friedberg that parodies the Romantic Comedy genre. It is their third movie, and the second one made by them on their own. Though the movie was panned by critics, it made 3 times its budget, thus kickstarting the duo's series of low-budget parody movies.
Tropes:
- Ashes to Crashes: The urn containing the ashes of the female lead's grandmother dropping and smashing during a disastrous dinner date and a mummified corpse of the grandma then falls out of the broken urn.
- Balcony Wooing Scene: Parodied with the boom-box apology, being followed by getting pelted with rocks and several objects.
- Comically Oversized Butt: The character "Jello" is a parody of Jennifer Lopez, giving her a butt so large that it knocks over furniture and makes it impossible for her to sit in a normal chair.
- Foot Popping: Julia pops her foot while kissing Grant, and Grant pops his foot also — the wrong way.
- Gender-Blender Name: Julia gets quite a shock when Grant's "best man" Andy turns out to be an extremely attractive woman.
- Informed Flaw: The main character is claimed to be "389 pounds, smokes a thousand cigarettes a day, and drinks like Tara Reid". While the first one is quite visible (and gets quickly removed via magic liposuction), she is never shown smoking or binge drinking, at all.
- Overly Long Gag: A scene involving a hand-puppet cat squirming on a toilet bowl lasts several minutes.
- Parents Suck at Matchmaking: Exaggerated for parody. The protagonist Julia is seeking love and eventually finds it with the kind (and wealthy) Grant Fockyerdoder. Unfortunately, her dad will only let her date someone of her ethnicity and thus she is only allowed to be with someone who is a Greek-Black-Indian-Japanese-Jewish person. While this is apparently more common-place than this sounds, he tries pairing her up with their handyman Nicky, who is portrayed as an unattractive slob who crassly rejects her over her appearance, only to later objectify her after she gets "pimped up."
- Sexy Surfacing Shot: Julia meets Grant's ex Andy emerging from the pool in Slow Motion in a gold bikini while "Don't Cha" plays in the background and immediately feels self-conscious.
- Symbolic Distance: Parodied while being Played for Laughs. As a parody of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005), Julia and Grant are in a counseling session where the two of them are being interviewed about their relationship. At one point while they're both sitting in separate chairs, Julia mentions that there's a "huge space" between them. Cut to their chairs suddenly being literally spread far apart from each other.
