Spoof movies aren’t what they used to be. I had a chuckle or two during some of the Scream movies, but not as much as I did during Airplane or even Naked Gun.
For quite sometime, I just thought I had grown out of them—that spoof movies were the same as they have ever been, but you have to be in seventh grade to the enjoy the humor of them.
I recently watched the Zucker Brother’s first movie Kentucky Fried Movie, and was reassured that indeed my taste have not changed, rather spoof movies have just gone from bad to worse.
What makes this spoof movie so great and so many others like it so horrible? The same thing that made The Simpsons season 1-11 great, and seasons 11 and onward just okay…it all comes down to originality. FYI, The Simpsons used to be great, but now I think they just copy themselves and redo episodes and themes they explored long ago—maybe if they spent some time investing in real writing talent (also the creator of the show is a jerk; I saw him at a book festival a few years back, and asked for his autograph; he let out a sigh and said, “If I sign for you, I’ll have to sign for everyone”…I pointed out that there was no one near us and I was the only one who recognized him, but he ignored me and walked away.)
Spoof movies are making fun of something that’s been done—how do you make that original? It’s definitely not plot; these movies have plots so horrible it’s funny. What they do so great is they don’t make fun of the obvious.
Kentucky Fried Movie is basically a spoof on pop culture; more specifically, seventies pop culture. It really has absolutely no plot—it’s just a bunch of vignettes that are only sometimes connected. At the core of the movie is a movie within a movie that is quite possibly the worse kung-fu movie ever made.
So when you’re tired of watching spoofs about gladiator movies and end of the world movies, return to the classics and give this one a shot. And when you’re done, re-watch Airplane and reminisce about the good old days.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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2 comments:
What also made the older spoof movies funny was that they actually had jokes, whereas with current spoof movies they think if you just reference a movie, it's automatically funny. "Look, it's a guy pretending to be Borat? That's funny, right? Hello, is anybody watching this movie?"
Although I did like Crispin Glover's take on Willy Wonka in "Epic Movie." In fact, that's the only thing I remember from "Epic Movie." Gotta love Crispin!
"Do you know what it's like to fall in the mud and get kicked? In the head? With an iron boot? Of course you don't. No one does. It never happens. It's a dumb question. Skip it."
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