Terrence Howard, Halle Berry's all-star comedy 'Movie 43' opens to scathing reviews

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Terrence Howard and Halle Berry are attempting a rare foray into comedy with their new all-star sketch comedy film Movie 43, but if the early reviews are any indication, they should stick to what they know best.

“An unbelievable roster of A-list stars, including two current Oscar nominees and one upcoming Oscar host, have somehow been hoodwinked — or, more likely, blackmailed — into participating in this exercise,” writes the Hollywood Reporter‘s Frank Scheck.

“There’s camp-fun bad and interestingly horrible bad, and then there’s just awful. Movie 43 is the Citizen Kane of awful,” adds Richard Roeper for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Movie 43 features an unprecedented collection of film stars including: Hugh Jackman, Emma Stone, Richard Gere, Kate Winslet, Uma Thurman, Johnny Knoxville, Gerard Butler and Dennis Quaid — just to name a few.

It is features several politically-incorrect vignettes directed by several different filmmakers including Brett Ratner (Rush Hour) and the Farrelly Brothers (Dumb and Dumber).

With the exception of B*A*P*S and Boomerang, Berry has almost exclusively made action and drama films. Similarly, Howard is best known for his dramatic chops in films like Crash and Hustle & Flow. However, in Movie 43 they try to push the envelope with uncharacteristic performances.

In this film Berry plays a woman on a blind date which escalates into a potentially dangerous game of Truth or Dare and Howard plays a 1960s-era basketball coach who tries to motivate his all-black basketball team solely based on race.

In one of the more charitable reviews, Entertainment Weekly‘s critic Maane Khatchatourian writes, “At its best, Movie 43 resembles a risqué episode of Saturday Night Live.”