A bad comedy is like sensory deprivation. You sit there unable to laugh because there is nothing to stimulate your sense of humour. You want to walk but part of you wants to give the movie a chance – ‘please, get better – show me some intelligence’. So you stay in your seat, eyes fixed, acutely aware of the time being wasted.

When I left the screening of MOVIE 43, I could barely speak. I felt like I had left something at the concessions stand. When the assistant asked me for something else, I should have replied, ‘yes, a ticket for another movie.’ ZERO DARK THIRTY had exactly the same start time, yet there I was about to have the good taste sucked out of myself. After the screening, I was numb.

In a just world, they would put that on the poster. As it is, they could just fill it with movie stars. Uma Thurman, Kate Winslet, Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler – these are just some of the people who should have known better. I didn’t, so why would they?

The film is a sketch comedy loosely linked by the general theme of bad taste. If there is a joke that they could not put on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, LATE NIGHT WITH JIMMY FALLON, or THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW (you mean that’s not a comedy?) then it’s here. One boy holds a dart in his mouth whilst another boy throws the board. Bullseye! Comedy gold it isn’t. Actually, the boys just want to be internet-famous. I could relate to that. But the kid in the other room messes with the views, attributing hits that never happen (much like this movie, I suppose). The two teens want revenge – they want to mess up his laptop, never mind that one of them would have to clean windows for like a month to replace it (that’s the glass thing through which rooms are lit during the day, as opposed to a product by Microsoft). So one of the kids makes up a story about a legendary dirty video called ‘Movie 43’, supposedly beyond porn – it’ll turn your faeces brown, if you’re a dog. (Wait a minute, dog poop is – never mind.) So while the little kid is away from his laptop and Teen One is filling it with computer viruses from porn sites, the search begins for the elusive movie. In real life, they probably would have just gone to Netflix. Here, we are treated to a series of sketches featuring A-list actors doing Z list material, which I believe is sort-of like Netflix.

So Kate Winslet goes on a blind date with Hugh Jackman and the early evening runs swimmingly until he takes off his scarf. I, of course, feel naked without mine, and so does Jackman as he reveals a very peculiar Adam’s apple which resembles a set of testicles. The joke is that no one except Winslet can see them – or responds to them. But this isn’t funny. We are supposed to be grossed out when Jackman’s neck balls end up in the soup. Sorry, didn’t work for me. Then Winslet is asked to pose for a picture. Jackman kisses her on the forehead and his neck balls trail in her face. Still not funny! There is no end to the non-joke – really, no end. The director cuts back to the kid still searching.

Another sketch is a little better. Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts (whom I believe are husband and wife off-screen) play a couple who home school their son. Only they put him through all the humiliations that he would get in growing up around insensitive and bullying others. They shout at him in the classroom. They nudge him on the stairs. They smear poop on his chest and tie him to a flagpole and film him. They hold a party in their own house and behave like teenagers. Mom gives the boy his awkward first kiss. Dad says that if he was gay, he would totally go for him. The punch line is that the kid appears normal, until he turns up with a girl’s picture on a broom.

Quite apart from illustrating why husbands and wives should never work together on screen (remember Bruce Willis and Demi Moore in MORTAL THOUGHTS – they split up soon after) it illustrates the difference between a sketch and a comedy short. A short would tell a story. We would see how the boy tried to escape his parents. In a sketch, we are just waiting for the punch line – by the time we get there, we don’t care.

So it goes on. Anna Faris plays a girl who gives her boyfriend (Chris Pratt) the opportunity to poop on her. He is shocked but apparently it is a way she deals with trust. He takes advice on how to create the most appropriate stool (still with me?) and he is told to eat Mexican food. Oh, and to drink a laxative. The big night arrives and he is ready to go full brownstone. Only she wants foreplay. His bowels say something else. Trousers down, buttocks about to erupt, he offends her. She runs away. He chases after her and splatters the windscreen. ‘You did this for me?’ All is forgiven, though I could not forgive the writers or the director.

You want more. What about the phone that is really a naked woman – the fan is contained in the, never mind. No, I didn’t laugh either. Or what would you think of Johnny Knoxville kidnapping a leprechaun (Butler) for his buddy (Seann William Scott)? Plenty of foul language (by now we are not shocked) and another leprechaun emerges from a pot of gold with a pair of machine guns (Butler again playing Machine Gun Belcher). Uh, nuh! Then there is Halle Berry going on a blind date with Stephen Merchant. (When is that going to happen?) A game of truth or dare reaches new and expensive heights; actually I switched off when Merchant had to cup another man’s rear trouser pocket. Or Chloë Grace Moritz (‘Hit Girl’) has her first period in a boy’s house. This was actually a good set up for a sketch; you want to know why she has not learnt about the menstrual cycle (she could have said ‘I thought it was one of my mom’s dumb keep fit videos’). No, it was all about her backside staining everywhere. At this point, a refund might be advisable. There is a skit about a shark biting a woman being an advert for Tampax. Kieran Culkin talks dirty to Emma Stone in the seedy dollar store where he works. Machines contain little kids who are just trying to give us coke cans and photocopies and don’t like it when we hit the equipment. 1960s Robin (Justin Long) goes speed dating and runs into Lois Lane (Uma Thurman), SuperGirl and Wonder Woman whilst getting advice from Batman. Finally, we discover that Movie 43 is a message from the future. There are a couple of sketches to round it off. An African-American basketball team learns the secret of their superiority – their colour. Elizabeth Banks has to contend with a badly animated cat with homosexual tendencies who tries to run her over.

I think I managed to remember all the sketches (Richard Gere and Jack McBrayer are in the ‘i-Babe’ one). Now I would like to forget them. Permanently! Why is it so unfunny? For gross-out humour to work, it has to be rooted in reality, or has to be cleverly developed. A couple of times it almost works. Mostly, you think this isn’t as extreme as we are told it is going to be. (At one point, the film was called RED BAND, which I thought was a Communist Folk Quartet.) It also has to be of the minute. I understand the film was made over several years – a skit here, a sketch there, fitted in between other projects. There is no consistency or escalation or real wit. I cannot believe that any actor associated with it would like to have it on their CV. I can imagine after its opening weekend, there will be some frantic damage limitation.