Parody Movies Aren't Dead...Yet

I want to say parody movies are dead, but instead I'll be optimistic and say they're on life support.  Last night I watched Spaceballs with my wife, this was her first time seeing the movie.  It had been awhile since I had seen the movie but I still knew every line and still laughed at every punch line.  I realized that I was even laughing at things I had not laughed at previously because I've gotten older and only now got some of the jokes that were previously over my head. 

Spaceballs holds up, as does every other Mel Brooks movie, with maybe the exception being Dracula: Dead & Loving It, but even that is better than the crop of dreck that calls itself parody movies.  The writing duo of Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have lobotomized the comedy art form that Mel Brooks made famous.  I couldn't help but think that in the hands of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer a Star Wars parody would most assuredly turn Yoda into Yo'Dawg and had the character played by Tracy Morgan.

Rather than create a top 5 worst list of movies these two have "written" because to be honest none of them are good enough to be numbers 2-5, I thought I'd point out what is wrong with all of them. I have not seen them all but much like you didn't need to know Hitler to know he was a bad man, you don't need to see these movies to know they're awful.

These two modern day Shakespeare's are responsible for Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, Meet the Spartans & The Biggest Movie of All Time 3D.  The premise of all of these movies is to take whatever is relevant right now...right now not three seconds ago but right now at this very minute that they're writing the movie and put that into the movie.  They will shoe horn it into a movie if they have to.

Britney Spears shaving her head is still super relevant and funny, right?

The scene above is from Meet the Spartans where our dynamic writing duo took the short scene from 300 where King Leonidas kicks the Persian messenger into a pit and dragged it on for so long just so they could incorporate a super timely Britney Spears reference as well as the American Idol judges. 

Rather than continue to show examples of the awful shoe horned pop culture references that litter their movies I'd like to instead provide just one example of why Mel Brooks is a genius and these two are putzes.  My example is the comedic masterpiece High Anxiety, which is a take on Vertigo and many other Hitchcock films.

It's not always good to be the King

Dr. Richard Thorndyke suffers from High Anxiety due to a trauma at a very young age.  In his attempt to help a beautiful young woman rescue her father from the "Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous" where he is the new administrator.  In an homage to The Birds Dr. Thorndyke is attacked by pigeons that shit all over him.  In a nod to Psycho he is attacked by a bell hop in the shower with a newspaper, we see the ink slowly slip down the drain.  In a scene that might have nothing to do with anything the good Dr. is attacked while making a phone call in a phone booth and his heavy breathing and struggle to live is mistaken for a dirty phone call by Madeline Kahn.  I could go on but I won't.

The point in all this is that we are in desperate need of smart comedies and parodies.  We have allowed ourselves to be fed the awful spoofs and Movie that the dynamic duds have thrown at us.  We should be demanding more from our entertainment and from Hollywood. 

I do believe the next blog I write will be devoted entirely to Mel Brooks movies, perhaps a top 5 list of my favorites.  He is one of my favorite directors which should come as no surprise considering we're both non practicing Jews from Brooklyn with a thing for Italian women.