I’m re-watching a sweet little indie homance (homo romance) called All Over The Guy. Amidst that angst of new love a-birthin’, there are two hilarious and completely mean-spirited (yet completely accurate) screeds tearing the shit out of that horrendo crapfest In and Out. I’m trying to think of some other movies that attack other movies. Not talking about movies that have parody scenes of other movies no matter how vicious the parody is. Looking for scenes where a character in one flick tees off on another flick. If there’s backstory and bad blood between the movie people, all the better and spill.
Well, in “Team America: World Police,” there’s a hilarious love song called “End of the Act,” with lyrics that utterly trash Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor.”
It had lines like:
“I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark when he made ‘Pearl Harbor.’”
“I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is ‘Pearl Harbor’ sucked, and I miss you.”
Well, at the end of What’s Up, Doc?, Ryan O’Neal says to Barbra Streisand, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” (A famous line from the movie Love Story, which O’Neal starred in.)
And Streisand’s character replies, deadpan, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
So, not a real big rip, but an obvious dig and one that wouldn’t have worked with any other actor.
Not sure if this counts, but there’s a scene in the low-budget sketch movie Hollywood Shuffle in which two black streetkids host a show called “Breakin’ In at the Movies” ala Siskel & Ebert. They watch scenes from movies that are very obviously parodies of Amadeus, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Dirty Harry and then rip them to shreds. It’s hysterical.
In Sleepless in Seattle Tom Hanks and pal make fun of An Affair to Remember as sentimental schlock (then become mock-ferklempt discussing The Dirty Dozen in one of the movie’s funniest moments).
I can think of lots of sitcom episodes that did this, incidentally, but not so many movies. (I particularly loved Elaine’s review of The English Patient in Seinfeld. JUST DIE!)
[hijack]What do they trash about In and Out? It was a pretty inoffensive middle of the road film as I recall. Now Birdcage, otoh, don’t make me commence…[/hijack]
That’s good to hear. I couldn’t stand that movie - why do you feel that way?
Eli and Tom are out on their first date and it’s not going well. To break the uncomfortable silence Eli asks if Tom likes movies, mentions that I&O was on cable the other night. How great to see a movie like that featuring two guys. Tom says he hated it. Eli says he thought it was “light…fun.” Tom replies “Fun to see Kevin Kline get on his sorry ass, middle-aged knees and give us a big old Hollywood blow job by catering to every cliched, homophobic stereotypical idea of what it means to be gay, without having the decency, or the courtesy or even just the balls to drop a little trou and show us his?” And then goes on to trash Joan Cusack’s character: “The loser bitch has been waiting her whole life to marry this nelly, Barbra-loving, self-hating geritaric English teacher who can’t get it up for her, and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her? No fuckin’ way!”
(Funny you should mention Birdcage, since Eli’s next line, as Tom leaves the table to grab another drink, is “I’m not even gonna mention Birdcage.”)
This is Tom. I’d forgive a mini-psycho outburst too.
Later Eli is at his parents’ house and I&O comes on as he’s flipping through the channels, and his mother (played by Andrea Martin) goes “I hate this film…what a piece of shit film, honestly…Like we’re supposed to believe…this woman’s gonna fall in love with a middle-aged, homophobic, self-hating teacher who’s only now discovered he’s gay…I. Don’t. Think. So. Change the channel…(to the movie) Fuck you!” Meanwhile the dad is interjecting “we hated this…change the channel…hated it…”
I forget how the scene led up to it, but in Barcelona, Christopher Eigman’s character decries The Graduate on the grounds that “Katherine Ross has just married this really cool guy, and then Dustin Hoffman shows up acting like a complete asshole—Elaiiiiiiiiiine! Elaiiiiiiiiiine!” It was nice for once to see someone take the side of one of those everlasting jilted grooms.
There’s a movie where Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (I think playing themselves, possible in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back ), quite openly rip on each others movies.
But the point was that Eigman saying this was mere narcissism on his part, so the joke’s on him. The groom in The Graduate would only seem a “really cool guy” to someone like him.
In Chasing Amy there a nice rant about Star Wars from a Black point of view, though it’s also meant to be ironic.
Well, but it’s what you asked for. And FYI, I agree with Eigman’s character; I don’t like the jilted-groom device. And Hoffman’s character was kind of a jack@ss. Just IMO.
:smack: I mean it’s what the OP asked for.
And in Clerks there’s a screen on why the rebels’ destroying the unfinished Death Star in Return of The Jedi was a rotten thing to do. All those poor innocent independent contractors…
Screed, not screen. There. Now it makes more sense.
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is filled with this. As Trillionaire pointed out, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon rip on each other’s flicks, they rip on unrelated flicks, and throghout the movie there are constant jokes about how stupid or crappy other Kevin Smith films are, including one point where they are talking about a movie based on Jay & Silent Bob and their comic book alter-egos and Jay says “who’d want to go see that?” and all three mug for the camera briefly. :dubious:
This is one of those movies that I can’t stop watching once I’ve begun. Love it!
That’d be it…
MATT
Just take it from “It’s a good course.”
BEN
Oh, now you’re the director.
MATT
Hey, shove it. Bounce-boy. Let’s remember who talked who into doing this shit in the first place. Talking me into Dogma was one thing, but this–
BEN
I’m sorry this is taking you away from whatever-gay-killers-on-horses-who-like-to-play-golf-touchy-feely-flick you’re supposed to be doing this week.
MATT
Oh–I’m touchy-feely? I take it you never saw Forces of Nature?
BEN
You’re like a child. What’ve I been telling you? Sometimes you’ve gotta do the safe picture. Sometimes, you do it for art. Sometimes, it’s the payback picture your friend says you
owe him–
*They take a beat and look at the camera. Then--*
BEN
And sometimes, you go back to the well.
MATT
And sometimes, you do Reindeer Games.
BEN
Now that’s just mean.
What’s a Nubian?
“Well, isn’t that true?”
BANG
While Robin Hood: Men in Tights was a parody film and therefore exempt from the OP, there’s at least one good direct dig in there at Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves: “Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.”
I’m going to fudge by listing a tv show ripping on a movie, but in a funny twisted way:
Angel, Season 3, episode “Fredless”:
Joss Whedon, creator of Angel, also wrote “Alien: Ressurection”, a fact I was unaware of the first time I saw this. Once I caught that, it’s always made me laugh.
Reverse that - it was Streisand’s character that said it to O’Neal, and O’Neal who replied “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
Although I can’t find anything to confirm this, I think Eastwood deliberately parodied every silly San Francisco movie ala Bullitt with car chases up and down hills with his scene in The Dead Pool where he’s chased by a remote controlled car rigged with explosives. There’s just no way he meant for that to be taken seriously, with the tiny car keeping up with Clint’s car, jumping through the air, etc.