You know the ones. "Scary Movie", "Date Movie", "Epic Movie", "Superhero Movie", and especially "Disaster Movie". These and other spoof movies such as "Meet the Spartans". How come they all sucked?
How Come "Movie" Movies Suck?
- Thread starter DwayneA
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Depends on your point of view. A lot of people found them funny and liked how they poked fun at the original movies and their clichés. Sure, the humor is often silly and groanworthy, but you were supposed to leave your brain at the door and bring your sense of humor along instead.
They made money, too!
Scary Movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/business
Scary Movie 4 (six years after the first)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362120/business
-Derek
They made money, too!
Scary Movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175142/business
Scary Movie 4 (six years after the first)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362120/business
-Derek
Because they have no real effort put into them and they're only made to cash in on the success of other movies.
It's mostly because they are branded as being "parodies" of their genre, but more often that not they know very little of the movie they are parodying, meaning it's a very shallow and ineffective parody and follow very little the "genre" movies they are meant to be made fun of.
Naked Gun and Airplane! are classics of parody movies since they obviously know very well patterns or "tropes" used and over used by the genres they are poking fun at (cop movies and shows and disaster movies, respectively), while the "movie" movies simply like to show characters of whatever movie premiered that year on weird situations with very little relation with their actual plot, even simply making fun of the trailer.
If anything it's a pastiche rather than a proper parody. And not a very good one, since it's humor, as a lot of bad humor nowadays, it's based on grossout and random pop culture references. The former is vulgar and childish and the later is weak and quickly becomes outdated.
Also, Seltzer and Friedberg have an odd penchant on putting rap moments there for no reason whatsoever.
Naked Gun and Airplane! are classics of parody movies since they obviously know very well patterns or "tropes" used and over used by the genres they are poking fun at (cop movies and shows and disaster movies, respectively), while the "movie" movies simply like to show characters of whatever movie premiered that year on weird situations with very little relation with their actual plot, even simply making fun of the trailer.
If anything it's a pastiche rather than a proper parody. And not a very good one, since it's humor, as a lot of bad humor nowadays, it's based on grossout and random pop culture references. The former is vulgar and childish and the later is weak and quickly becomes outdated.
Also, Seltzer and Friedberg have an odd penchant on putting rap moments there for no reason whatsoever.
Because their whole point is to be like the Chris Farley show, and say, "Remember that time? When that guy was in that one movie and he did that? Yeah, that was awesome..."
Pretty much. The guys making the movies didn't realize that creating a parody requires actual parody and not just references. The first Airplane movie actually used the full plot (and much of the dialogue) of a lesser known disaster movie called Zero Hour! It wasn't just a hodge-podge of elements from a bunch of loosely related flicks mixed with unrelated pop-culture references.
This. Some are ok, but I don't think many really try hard. They take the easy road, the easy jokes.
And this. Shallow is a very good way of putting it.
Now Naked Gun and Airplane are classics, and IMO, very funny. I also enjoy a lot of Mel Brooks' parodies. The ones made nowadays with inevitably the word "Movie" in it, probably won't be very good.
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I found with the "Scary Movie" that if you watch enough previews you've seen the entire movie. I kid you not. Finally watched with a friend one day and about every 15 minutes I was saying, "I remember seeing that in the preview" well all the best parts anyways.
The (arguably) "good" movie parody films:
Spaceballs
Airplane!
Naked Gun
Top Secret!
They aren't all bad. There are good ones and bad ones, like any film genre. The ones the OP listed sucked for same reason any movie sucks. Mostly because they're bad movies with lazy writing and directing. That disease afflicts all kinds of movie genres, not just spoofs and parodies.
Spaceballs
Airplane!
Naked Gun
Top Secret!
They aren't all bad. There are good ones and bad ones, like any film genre. The ones the OP listed sucked for same reason any movie sucks. Mostly because they're bad movies with lazy writing and directing. That disease afflicts all kinds of movie genres, not just spoofs and parodies.
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I haven't seen any of them so I couldn't say. I have seen airplane and naked gun, and spaceballs, and enjoyed them, and heard of zero hour, so there you go. I 'm going to say I agree with Maxmordon. I'll sound intelligent that way.
Oh yeah, top secret. What about Hot Shots?
Oh yeah, top secret. What about Hot Shots?
My favorite parodies are good movies in their own rights.
Galaxy Quest has a real character arc, awesome space battles, and a creative and scary bad guy.
Mystery Men is actually a really awesome superhero team movie, with inventive and flashy villains.
Hot Fuzz is a pretty good mystery followed by a pretty DAMN good action movie, with great characterization and directing.
Shaun of the Dead never forgets to be a good zombie movie, even when its being an absolutely hysterical romantic comedy.
And so on.
Galaxy Quest has a real character arc, awesome space battles, and a creative and scary bad guy.
Mystery Men is actually a really awesome superhero team movie, with inventive and flashy villains.
Hot Fuzz is a pretty good mystery followed by a pretty DAMN good action movie, with great characterization and directing.
Shaun of the Dead never forgets to be a good zombie movie, even when its being an absolutely hysterical romantic comedy.
And so on.
Galaxy Quest is so good that I often forget it is a parody. Great characters (and actors), writing, dialogue, and funny as hell.
Shaun of the Dead is pretty funny itself. Recently saw it again because I have been in a Zombie mood.
In one of my tabletop RPGs, I had my players attacked by a rock monster while exploring a strange alien world. The characters ended up quoiting Galaxy Quest verbatim:
"Quick, go for the eyes, go for the vulnerable spots!"
"ITS A ROCK MONSTER! IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY VULNERABLE SPOTS!"
"Quick, go for the eyes, go for the vulnerable spots!"
"ITS A ROCK MONSTER! IT DOESN'T HAVE ANY VULNERABLE SPOTS!"
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This was a problem with the delightfully campy British comedy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, too many people saw it and thought it was an actual show rather than a parody of cheap crazy early 1980's television, same thing can happened on the other way, though, I thought Airwolf was a parody a la Garth Marenghi the first time I saw it on TCM...
Not to mention the characters' names. Zero Hour! was on TCM recently, and wasn't all that bad a watch for having had about $47 spent on it.
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IMHO...
All these movies are just a string of jokes. That might make a good comedy sketch, but it doesn't make for a good movie. Consider Young Frankenstein or Being There or Tootsie. Each of these are good stories, but were played to humorous effect. Even the more outlandish comedies like Animal House are built around a story.
I bet if Airplane! was done by Friedberg and Seltzer it would be a series of characters going up and about between a tower in fire, an airplane, a ship upside down and an earthquake and everyone would be saying things like "This is just like the Towering Inferno!" it would also include flimsy references to The Blues Brothers, The Empire Strikes Back and The Blue Lagoon, or at least their respective trailers.
They haven't even put effort in to come up with a real name.
What makes you think they'll have a real plot?
What makes you think they'll have a real plot?
Aye, those are some good parody movies.
Whereas the "____ Movie" scripts a basically like Mad Libs with whatever's currently in theaters.
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The movies Zoombie mentioned are parodies of particular genres: Galaxy Quest parodies science fiction, Mystery Men took on superheroes, Hot Fuzz buddy-cops movies, and Shaun of the Dead was a great mash-up of zombie movies and romantic comedies. The "________ Movie" series parodies specific movies, which might be fine for sketch comedy shows on TV but by the time a lot of these "________ Movie" get released, the original source material has moved out of the multiplexes, beyond the bargain houses, and have settled into a decent run on HBO or Showtime while waiting for the DVD release simulcast to hit On Demand on cable. They rely too much on the assumption that people have seen the original source material (300, Scream, The Breakfast Club, et. al.) to get the jokes, rather than jokes about the specific tropes that people remember the most about the genres.
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