This latest offering in a rapidly deteriorating franchise is a series of loosely connected skits and vignettes that aims to target as many recent Hollywood hits as possible and lampoon them, à la Kenny Everett, in the worst possible taste.

Thus we are treated to an array of lame takes on some familiar subjects: Sex and the City, No Country for Old Men, Beowulf, High School Musical, Enchanted, Kung Fu Panda and Juno. The latter forms the basis for the film's would-be satire. There are cameos for Iron Man, Hellboy and The Incredible Hulk, while Mike Myers' self-indulgent flop The Love Guru also comes in for a roasting.

This is Hollywood eating itself – a joyfully cannibalistic exercise in toe-curling self-parody that only barely comes alive at intermittent moments and those appealing purely to the worst teenage mentality.

In a movie that relishes deconstructing established Hollywood scriptwriting and winking as it does so, the main target appears to be Diablo Cody's Juno, a fresh and funny portrait of teen pregnancy.

But writer/director/producer duo Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer cannot compete and their continued swipes at bigger budget extravaganzas fall flat.

Working to a formula created by Marlon and Keenan Wayans, they fail to recognise when a joke misfires or when, crucially, it's been heard and ignored before. Disaster Movie is full of them.

A tight cast works hard, often in multiple roles, to deliver the goods but this one only vaguely succeeds when dipping into gross-out humour.

A sequence involving the very pregnant Juno brought a smile, as did the rather risqué lyrics of a song performed by Justin Timberlake (aka Jonas Neal). And the image of a belching Amy Winehouse (actually Nicole Parker) will stay with me for an uncomfortably long time.

And the plot? Loved-up twentysomethings Will and Amy (Matt Lanter and Vanessa Minnillo) find themselves beset by all manner of natural disasters. That's it.

Don't waste your time.