Does Movie 43 represent the greatest waste of talent in the history of cinema? The grotesque "comedy" represents co-director and producer Peter Farrelly cashing in all his chips for some unknown reason, relying on favors and presumably blackmail to talk so many big stars into an anthology of crude shorts that, when compiled, result in very little redeemable value.

Movie 43 stars... deep breath... Dennis Quaid, Greg Kinnear, Elizabeth Banks, Kristen Bell, Halley Berry, Kate Bosworth, Gerard Butler, Josh Duhamel, Anna Faris, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Hugh Jackman, Johnny Knoxville, Justin Long, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Chloe Grace Moretz, Live Schreiber, Seann William Scott, Emma Stone, Naomi Watts and Kate Winslet, among others. Each are in the movie for just a few minutes, and I'm sure in their minds, that's more than enough.

Movie 43 has been called by many critics as one of the worst movies ever made, and that's not far from the truth.

The strange thing is that, segment by segment, Movie 43 isn't completely intolerable. Each plays like an R-rated SNL or Funny or Die sketch, not particularly funny but not horrendously offensive, either. A sketch involving Live Schreiber and Naomi Watts as homeschooling parents who attempt to maintain a normal life for their son by subjecting him to the same bullying and ridicule as he would face at a real school is marginally amusing and feels like nothing worse than any overly long SNL skit. Another, with Terrence Howard proclaiming to his all-black basketball team that they have nothing to worry about because they're black (and other team is white), is also harmless.

And yet, with so many big actors involved and these sketches hacked together into a full-length movie, the experience is pretty brain numbing. Movie 43 appears to be a concoction of stories that have been floating around in Farrelly's head for years, but are so bad they never would have worked on their own. Putting them altogether into one movie... a masterpiece of awfulness.

Is Movie 43 the worst movie of all time? No, not even close. Does Movie 43 represent the greatest waste of talent in the history of cinema? Unequivocally yes.

Review by Erik Samdahl unless otherwise indicated.