Date Movie (2006)
Directed by Aaron Seltzer
No — Date Movie is not woke, scoring 2 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Date Movie arrived in 2006 as a product of the Friedberg and Seltzer assembly line, a parody of romantic comedies that borrowed the shapes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Meet the Fockers and returned them slightly dented.
Consciousness Markers
The cast includes minority actors in supporting comedic roles, but this is standard spoof casting rather than a deliberate progressive representation agenda.
No LGBTQ+ themes or characters; a single throwaway joke about a male housekeeper does not constitute representation.
The film parodies rom-com tropes with a makeover plot and a catfight over a man, offering no feminist critique or agenda.
Ethnic stereotypes are used for humor, not to explore racial consciousness or social justice.
No environmental or climate themes.
Consumerism is mocked superficially, but there is no anti-capitalist or eat-the-rich message.
The protagonist is described as obese and undergoes a makeover to become slimmer, reinforcing rather than challenging body standards.
No neurodivergent characters or themes.
No historical revisionism; the film is a contemporary spoof.
The film aims for crude humor and pop-culture references, not moral lecturing.
Why it received this score
Date Movie arrived in 2006 as a product of the Friedberg and Seltzer assembly line, a parody of romantic comedies that borrowed the shapes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Meet the Fockers and returned them slightly dented. It grossed nearly eighty-five million dollars on a twenty million dollar budget, which tells us something durable about the American appetite, and it was savaged by critics with a thoroughness usually reserved for traffic accidents. The film does not pretend to argue anything. It simply arrives, makes its noises, and leaves.
The plot concerns Julia, described as obese, who is pimped out and slimmed down before winning the affections of Grant. There are jokes about her weight, jokes about a Greek diner, jokes about a housekeeper named Eduardo, and a Kill Bill style catfight between two women over a man. Each of these elements could, in a different film, serve as the raw material of a social argument. Here they are punchlines and nothing else. The movie has no thesis to advance, no lesson to impart, no correction to propose for the viewer's politics or posture. It is crude without being crusading.
That absence deserves stating plainly, because the temptation is to read any film with a plus-sized protagonist and a makeover montage as a statement. This one is not making a statement. It is making a noise. There is a kind of honesty in that, though not the kind that earns respect. What we are left with is a comedy that offends broadly and advocates nothing, which leaves the cultural ledger entirely blank.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Synopsis
Spoof of romantic comedies which focuses on a man, his crush, his parents, and her father.
Questions about Date Movie
Is Date Movie woke?
No — Date Movie is not woke, scoring 2 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.
Does Date Movie have any woke elements?
No. All 10 markers score zero.
How does Date Movie compare to other 2006 movies?
It ranks #173 of the 211 films from 2006 we've scored; their average is 11. The wokest is An Inconvenient Truth (92).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.