I like parody movies. I think the first one I saw was Top Secret, then Naked Gun that my parents took me to see when I was a kid (which if I remember right, came out the same time as Batman or Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade). Anyway, I’ve always thought Not Another Teen Movie was really good, but it seems like any parody movie that came out after that was complete and utter drivel, but perhaps I missed a gem because I gave up on the genre after Epic Movie or one of its clones. Have any good parody movies been made in the past decade or so?
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is a pretty good parody of biopic movies.
Walk Hard is fuckin’ hilarious and the music is actually awesome.
Full-bore parodies have been disappointing, perhaps with the rise of Youtube as a platform for parodies, but many movies and TV shows have parody elements you might enjoy.
Edge Wright’s stuff:
Shaun of the Dead (zombie movies)
Hot fuzz (cop movies)
The world’s end (disaster/horror)
Scott Pilgrim vs the World (romantic comedy/video games)
Four lions (a Wilt-like take on terrorism)
21 & 22 Jump Street (cop/school)
Community often has episodes dedicated to taking the piss at particular genres.
Rick & Morty riffs off and subverts genres.
I liked Vampires Suck. Especially Jacob scratching behind his ear with his foot. The gal doing Kristen Stewart’s facial contortions was good, too.
Of course, I enjoyed the Twilight movies, so bear that in mind.
Does Shoot 'em Up count? Sure, they play it straight, but it’s so gloriously over the top there’s no way it was meant to be taken seriously.
Both of the Machetes were fun.
I’ll second all the Edgar Wright stuff and 3rd Walk Hard.
My favourite parody of the past decade is probably the British TV series “Hunderby” which is a wonderfully bizarre and crude parody of 19th-century books like “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”.
Team America: World Police is a fantastic parody of action films.
Not a straight parody like The Naked Gun or Airplane, but I liked the role-reversal in Dale and Tucker vs Evil.
*Affable hillbillies Tucker and Dale are on vacation at their dilapidated mountain cabin when they are mistaken for murderers by a group of preppy college students. *
Tucker: What am I supposed to say, Dale? “Oh hidy ho officer! We’ve had a doozy of a day. There we were minding our own business, just doing chores around the house when kids started killing themselves all over my property.”
Dale: Yeah, yeah, just like that.
Tucker: They’re never gonna believe that.
Dale: But that’s exactly what happened!
Wasn’t Scary Movie supposed to have worked fairly well? Not seen any of them, but I heard at least one of them was good.
A few that I don’t think have been mentioned:
Kung Fu Hustle: A great parody of Chinese action movies.
A Mighty Wind: A Christopher Guest mockumentary. What more do you need to know?
Tropic Thunder: A great parody of both military action thrillers and movie making.
A lot of people use them to exemplify bad parodies, but I find that SM I, III, and IV are pretty reliable, as long as you enjoyed the original movies they are parodying. Like Airplane, there are some scenes that are sublime send-ups and others that fall absolutely flat. Even SM II has some enjoyable scenes. SM V, unfortunately, has no redeeming qualities.
Scary movie and all its sequels are all complete shit.
Dang it, now I want to know what movie I was thinking of. I could have sworn there was a horror movie spoof that worked, unless this is a difference of opinion as ZonexandScout thinks Scary Movie worked.
I thought the first two Scary Movies were good.
If we’re talking mocumentaries, I rather enjoyed The making of …And God Spoke., a behind the scenes documentary of the making of a biblical film. It’s along the lines of This is Spinal Tap.
Marvin Handleman: We’ll fix that in post.
Marvin Handleman: We can also fix that in post.
Marvin Handleman: We’ll fix that in post too. Don’t underestimate the magic of post production Chip…
Marvin Handleman: …That will be a little more difficult to fix in post
Walk Hard was complete shit. Scary Movie had some redeeming qualities. Specifically, it had the wonderful Anna Faris. And so did the sequels.
A Million Ways To Die In The West wasn’t bad for a parody of westerns. I mean, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t total shit either.
Cabin In The Woods was in part a parody of scary movies. It’s not a full-out comedy parody like a Mel Brooks film, though. While it had its funny moments, it was still very scary and a great watch. There was so much metafiction, genre awareness, lampshade hanging, etc. So it’s a parody while not being a parody because it’s aware of what it’s parodying. Maybe.
There are some recent parody series with a mention: American Vandal is a parody of true crime investigations and Documentary Now creates amazing parodies of various documentaries.