The calibre of movie spoofs these days makes one weep for the genre's heyday, when certified nuts like Mel Brooks cranked out gems like Blazing Saddles and History of the World, Part 1, which lampooned entire genres with witty scripts that actually told a story and starred great actors who just wanted to be involved with a potential classic.

But to give credit where it's due today, writer-directors Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are nothing if not prolific, cranking out the Scary Movie, Date Movie and Epic Movie instalments with a regularity that is exhausting to contemplate.

It helps their enterprise that so many flamboyant, lampoon-friendly movies are released these days. It makes one think that some of them were created solely for the purpose of providing these guys with raw material. Now, there has always been a fairly lax standard for what qualifies as scary and what would be an epic, and so it is with the disaster concept. It's probably accurate to say that most anything that appeared in theatres since the last Friedberg-Seltzer production is fair game.

The tent-pole films for Disaster Movie are Cloverfield (without the nauseating camerawork, thank goodness) and Night at the Museum (where all the exhibits come to life). Hanging from those poles is a string of gags that flash by like an express train going in the opposite direction. There are plenty of fleeting references to superhero movies (Iron Man, Hellboy, The Incredible Hulk, Batman, Hancock), adventure sagas (Indiana Jones, 10,000 B.C.), sci-fi and thrillers (Wanted, Jumper) and comedies that were both hits (Superbad) and misses (Love Guru).

For no good reason, except the writers could think of a gag, there are vicious and frequently hilarious jabs at folks like Amy Winehouse, Jessica Simpson, Carrie Bradshaw (courtesy of a cross-dressing actor with a face like a foot, which should make Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker weep with rage), Dr. Phil, Justin Timberlake and that perennial target, Michael Jackson.

Two particular performers deserve honourable mention: Nicole Parker, who stars in the Winehouse and Simpson cameos but has a really juicy role as the princess whom Amy Adams played in Enchanted, and Crista Flanagan, who spoofs Ellen Page's extremely pregnant character in Juno, while speaking entirely in what she readily admits are "overly written, clever-for-clever's-sake quips."

Dialling down the gross-out comedy (although plenty of precious bodily fluids still get sprayed around) seems to have sharpened the lads' writing. It bodes well for the sequel, which is a sure thing, you realize.