This weekend, "Disaster Movie," a film (if we can use that term) that spoofs virtually no actual disaster movies and instead re-imagines the "Sex and the City" characters as men in drag as if that were the peak of high comedy, pulled in $6.9 million at the box office over the long weekend. For most movies that's not a huge haul and it's way less than "Meet the Spartans" pulled in. But for the sake of reference, that's more money that you or I will probably see in a lifetime.

We're evil and all, but even we think that's too much to stomach.

At the beginning of the year, we listed several things we didn't want to see in 2008. And while some have actually seemed to fade over the past few months (finally, it seems people just accept YouTube as a way of life), the movies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer continue unabated.

So, we've decided to take a more direct approach than we and others have tried to end their tyranny. We present to you five reasons why they must be brutally dismembered immediately.

They are irreparably harming the very concept of humor.

Some may say that those of us who hate the Friedberg/Seltzer cabal are taking this too seriously, that these movies are just meant to be silly comedies and aren't supposed to be scrutinized. But those people are the ones being are being brainwashed. These movies, along with other reference-happy pop culture, are the cause of an ever-growing belief that such material is, in fact, acceptable comedy. It isn't.

The problem lies in the idea that something that is "random" is inherently funny. (By the way, nothing in these movies is, in fact, "random." Somebody thought it up, though it's hard to believe it. These things were not spit out by a computer sifting through reams of celebrity names. The more appropriate word is probably "arbitrary.") If "random" equaled funny, you wouldn't have to pay $10.50 and go to a movie theater to have seemingly unrelated things spit out at you. You could simply stay at home, flip through the TV channels and laugh at everything you hear.

There's a wide gulf between "Disaster Movie" or "Epic Movie" and an actual comedy, like "The Big Lebowski," which generates humor from character interactions and absurdity that builds from the characters. Or even a broad comedy like "Caddyshack" or "Animal House" or, shit, "The House Bunny."

That gulf is called writing.

Because of them, Carmen Electra, Kim Kardashian and Mad TV cast members continue to get work.

The above sentence is essentially self-explanatory, but the consequence thereof is that, for every film produced that casts one of the mouth breathers listed (among others), another, better movie which may have cast, say, Michael Cera or Steve Coogan or Ricky Gervais or somebody else with talent goes unmade.

So Ike Barinholtz actually has a movie career while David Cross struggles for work.

That's the world we live in.

The spoof genre may never recover.

We made a similar argument earlier, but it bears repeating: References do not equal jokes. Simply the appearance of Hannah Montana or "Deal or No Deal" in your movie does not constitute a joke. It seems more like some kind of attempt to create a national hive mind that believes the very concept of Britney Spears to be hilarious.

But now, because of these guys, people believe the simple act of reference to be tantamount to parody or satire. It's not even close.

And that's a problem for anything that actually is parody or satire. Take "Airplane!" for example, pretty much the standard for every joke-a-minute parody or spoof film of the past 30 years. All the jokes in that movie take a trope from a too-serious genre (the multiple air disaster movies of the '70s) and send it up, turn it on its head and cleverly poke fun. For instance, the movies "Airplane!" parodied featured a lot of celebrities in roles in which they really didn't fit. How do you make fun of that? Make Kareem Abdul-Jabbar a pilot. That's funny, because there's a reason for it.

"Date Movie" is now in the same spoof genre, even though most of the jokes are there for no reason whatsoever and many of the movies it spoofs are already comedies, few of which take themselves too seriously. Doesn't that, then, somewhat lower the status of "Airplane!"?

It does. Frankly, it's the equivalent of a child rapist moving into the neighborhood. The neighbors ("Airplane!" or "The Naked Gun," or movies like them) didn't do anything wrong, but their houses just became virtually worthless.

They are taking money away from people who don't know any better.

This is the old argument against states enacting a lottery or legalizing gambling — that getting people to pay for the promise of a reward is a way of taking advantage of those who don't understand that there's little chance they will win.

But at least in gambling and lotteries somebody wins. At least one person hits the jackpot, and a number of other people get small payouts.

With Friedberg/Seltzer movies, no one wins. All the money spent on tickets simply goes down a hole, never to return. Those idiots who think that that joke in the "Meet the Spartans" trailer where Spider-Man pulls Donald Trump's toupee off is going to be so worth it in the theater get nothing but disappointment and scorn for the price of their ticket.

They are the true victims in our society.

Their unyielding product placements and internet shout-outs are desensitizing viewers to it.

The video on the right (created by Maddox himself) pretty much sums up this point, but I'll elaborate a little.

If you have to pad out your movie with almost full-on YouTube clips and you need the revenue generated from characters discussing the virtues of Dentyne Ice and cell phones, you may have gotten into the wrong business, since some snooty critics consider films to be so-called "art." But what could you do other than make films?

Let's see. Your skills seem to be in making short video sequences that promote products and/or are meant to promote flash-in-the pan Web personalities.

Hmmmm. We can't think of any jobs that require those skills.

So we guess we'll have to kill you guys. Hold them still, America.

treachery@the-iss.com