"This movie rises below vulgarity."
—Mel Brooks, on "The Producers.'
Back in the '70s and '80s, there were two kinds of spoof movies.
On one side, there was the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker school, whose defiantly corny slapstick humor deliberately invoked classic 1950s comedies. The Zucker films, which included the "Naked Gun" series and "Airplane," appealed to nearly everyone -- kids liked seeing people slip on banana peels, and adults saw the films as throwbacks to the less edgy comedy of their youth.
On the other hand, Brooks was the primary master of this new-school spoof film. His films were frequently vulgar and always subversive, with hidden social commentary buried among the fart jokes, for example, the portrayal of racism in "Blazing Saddles." Brooks was wrong -- his films were far from the crude low humor for which he eventually and unfairly gained a reputation.
Fast forward to 2008, and everything has gone astray. Brooks hasn't directed anything since the appalling "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," and the Zuckers have been churning out sub-par spoof films that embarrass their legacy. Here are films that truly rise below vulgarity. They aren't really profane or rude, but they succeed in being offensive to viewer's intelligence. There are four central flaws that ruin the modern spoof film.
1. It's the genre, stupid.
Early spoof films concentrated on genres instead of individual send ups of films. Although there has been the occasional excellent film-by-film parody (the Zucker's suprisingly rude "Kentucky Fried Movie" comes to mind), most of the time it leads to lazy writing and terrible jokes. Many of the films sent to theaters from the Hollywood spoof
movie factory have been based entirely on comedies that were funny in the first place. Which leads us to point #2:
2. Less impressions, more jokes
Doing an impression of a film character without any recognizable punch line comes off like a 12-year-old at an open mic flailing for laughs. Just being Juno isn't enough — she wasn't funny in the first place, so why would I pay $10 to see her cynical stupidity again? Parody is only parody when there's actual mocking involved.
3. Grow some...err, teeth.
The parodies in the spoof films of today have no hint of social commentary or biting wit. They aren't attacking anything — they're rather gentle at heart, and that doesn't work for a spoof.
They need to grow some cajones and start parodying targets that actually have some ability to fight back. Otherwise you come off as Eminem brawling with Triumph The Insult Comic Dog. Sure, you win, but at what cost?
4. Never, ever, ever, ever cast Kim Kardashian.
Please. Her sex tape was boring enough — do you really want to see her act?
A genre that once spilled out some of the funniest films of the 20th century, i.e. "Airplane!" and "The Naked Gun" series, the spoof film is certainly a dying breed. New films like "Meet the Spartans" and "Epic Movie" prove that new writers lack all sense of originality, relying on lame pop culture references to draw in viewers.
Despite all this, these films still bring in the big bucks at the box office.
So what gives? Are spoof films just being dumbed down for our generation's dumber audiences, or is the franchise being supported by pubecent boys willing to pay the $10.50 to see a half naked Carmen Electra play a Spartan housewife?
I'll assume the latter.
Contributed to by JP Porretta.
Spoof Movies embarass themselves
Published: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Updated: Tuesday, September 16, 2008
 "Photo: illustration by Andoni Flores")
illustration by Andoni Flores
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