Why are "Scary movie" and "Not another teen movie" considered good parody movies? What is so funny about them?

Cafe Society
1

Spoilers

Scary movie got mixed reviews when it came out, but it was a box office success. Not another teen movie was badly reviewed and a box office failure. But these days, many people talk about how funny those movies are and how parody used to be so much better etc. You can easily find such comments/reviews on Imdb, Reddit, YouTube and so on (though the sequels to Scary movie are usually panned).

And I don’t get it. Those movies are honestly awful, and they get the parody genre pretty much all wrong. I know the taste is subjective and I should probably stop there, but geez…

First of all, parody/spoof only works when you parody serious movies that (mostly) take themselves seriously. Self-importance of the source material is the key. Scary movie and Not another teen movie don’t fit that at all. The first one set out to parody the 90s teen slashers; mainly the Scream series. But Scream was already pretty self-aware and campy to begin with. It set out to subvert some common slasher horror movie tropes, and did it pretty well. So… where’s the parody potential?

Not another teen movie tried to parody… teen comedies. How exactly do you parody… a comedy? Did they think the creators of She’s all That or Ten Things I Hate About You were trying to make masterpieces/groundbreaking cinema? They also parody Cruel Intentions. This one is not a conedy, but it is very clearly a satire. Mainly a joint satire of teenage romcoms and softcore porn, with a heavy topping of camp and the late 90s cheese. You’re parodying a satire now? Did they actually think that was meant to be taken seriously? A late 90s teen movie with stepsiblings taboo added in, based on the 18th century French erotica that had already been adapted into a period piece/erotic drama starring John Malkovich and Glenn Close? Yeah, sure…

Also, Not another teen movie literally has a scene where a character says: “Sure, why not? I am the token black guy. I’m just supposed to smile and stay out of the conversation and say things like; “Damn,” “Shit,” and “That is whack.”” So… literally explaining/breaking down a certain trope/cliche is supposed to be funny?

Scary movie also parodies American Beauty, Usual Suspects (they based the ending around that), and other movies that have nothing to do with Scream or horror movies in general. That is a staple of bad parody movies: they don’t just parody one movie or genre or movies, but whatever is popular at the time. It would be like if Blazing Saddles randomly started to parody Dirty Harry or The Godfather.

Lastly, with good parody movies you get a sense that the authors actually like and respect the source material. With Scary movie and Not another teen movie, I don’t get that at all. It feels like a bunch of douchebags going “Hahahaha isn’t this stupid?” or “Hahahaha wouldn’t it be funny if something random and/or gross happened in this scene?”, while being too dumb and/or arrogant to realize that the movies they’re making fun of are already pretty self-aware, and that ths cheese and camp is intentional (and works well).

It’s just taking something pretty intelligent (including intelligent humor/wit) and dumbing it down to an embarrassing degree.

Those parody movies are awful, but so many people these days praise them as some great spoofs. Those same people complain about Epic movie and Meet the Spartans being awful parody movies. I mean, of course they are, but what do you think paved the way for them?

2

I disagree with your premise that you can only parody a serious subject. I feel you can parody almost any subject as long as it has established conventions, which can be recognized and subverted. Teen comedies and slasher movies certainly have these conventions.

Out of curiosity, what’s your opinion on Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, two movies which I feel successfully parodied the conventions of westerns and classic horror?

3

Of course you can, but it just comes across as dumb to me, like taking intelligent humor and dumbing it down. Kathryn and Cecile’s conversation about orgasm in Cruel Intentions is probably funnier than the whole Not Another Teen Movie.

I quite liked Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, though it’s been a while since I’ve watched them. Mel Brooks still has some spoofs that are hit and miss, such as High Anxiety, but nothing as bad as Scary Movie or Not Another Teen Movie. Blazing Saddles has a few random parody techniques/elements, like the Nazis in the Wild West, but it doesn’t base the movie on them.

4

Who considers those movies ‘good parody movies’? They are parody movies that concentrated on mimicking the memes and tropes from the original movies. I don’t think there was anything all that good about them, a good joke here and there, but mainly mockery. There are worse parodies made on that basis. If you want to see even worse parodies check out porn parodies. They get some people who have some minimal resemblance to stars of movies or TV shows, call them by the character names from those performances, and then they all have sex. It’s a cheap way of using the established character names and titles without fear of copyright infringement.

5

Scary Movie was trash and thought references in and of themselves are funny. Not Another Teen Movie was legitimately a funny parody movie.

6

The movies you’re describing are more in the vein of the Zucker brothers rather than Mel Brooks. In fact I believe at least one of the Zuckers was involved in the Scary Movie series.

7

To address this specific question, yes, that is genuine satire. A lot of teen comedies had a single black supporting character. He was essentially present to show that the leads were cool and non-racist because they have a black guy in their social circle. But the black character had no agency or narrative of their own; they were just there to make the white lead look good.

A lot of (white) viewers of these movies probably put themselves into the viewpoint of the lead and never thought about how the black character was being used. Not Another Teen Movie brought this to the viewer’s attention and called out the subtle racism of black characters never being the lead in teen comedies. Or the broader racism of how studios always cast white actors as “normal” characters and only cast black actors as characters who were specifically black.

8

I get the point, but the character literally saying that to the audience is neither clever nor funny. Simply explaining a cliche/trope is not good humor IMO. A better example would be subversion where the protagonist is black, his white friend acts as a token black character usually acts in teen movies, and everyone acts oblivious and treats the situation like normal.

9

I disagree. Often that only way you get people to notice an unspoken assumption is to say it out loud. The humor comes when the viewer recognizes that they had not been aware of their assumption until it was pointed out to them (as long as the viewer is willing to laugh at themselves anyway).

10

I am with you in that I don’t think it is very clever at all, but it is meant to function as a setup for his next 3 lines to be -
“Shit.”
“Damn”
“Oh, that is whack.”
They are interspersed through a conversation about unwanted anal sex that springs from nowhere.

Your idea is funny.

11

Meh… they pretty much treat the audience like idiots (I’m sure not all moviegoers are clever and parodies are not that highbrow to begin with, but still, it’s off-putting) and there is just nothing very comedic about it. Especially when you do it more than once.

That technique is also almost always a staple of bad parodies/comedies. Family Guy does it pretty often, and I think most can agree that show isn’t exactly comedy gold. Look up their parodies of Breaking Bad, Of Mice and Men, Great Gatsby, Silence of the Lambs etc. Most of it is just characters explaining what is going on, what trope or cliche was in the original. It was also present in Doug Walker’s notoriously bad parody of The Wall (to be fair, many other things were wrong with it too), it was used in Meet the Spartans and others. The proof is in the pudding.

But that is just my opinion, of course. Maybe some people think that message is important enough to sacrifice the comedy, maybe some genuinely think the characters saying something like that is hilarious. I don’t.

12

Teen comedies might have been comedies, but they did take themselves seriously. She’s All That did genuinely try to present that this girl was unattractive without a wink or a nod.

13

Eh, far-fetched premise isn’t always “taking it seriously”. That is when movie takes something pretty outrageous and plays it straight, and/or tries very hard to make some grand statement and explore complicated themes, but with subpar results. Or something that simply aged badly. See ridiculously jingoistic 80s movies like Rocky IV or Red Dawn, or some 1930s horror movies that look hilariously outdated now.

Presenting Rachel Leigh Cook as unattractive is admittedly a stretch, but the point seems to be that in High school, someone pretty can still be considered unattractive/unpopular if they are not completely conventionally attractive and don’t dress and do make up like the popular kids.

14

FWIW, I consider The Cabin In The Woods to be the perfect deconstruction of the teen/horror genre. The parodies pale by comparison.

15

The Breakfast Club took itself very seriously - the concluding essay, the Bowie lyrics, the encounter group revelations - I loved the film in the 80s when I was the characters’ age - but it certainly took itself seriously

16

I feel it takes cleverness to spot something that millions of viewers have seen but never noticed (like the example I gave of how black actors are used). And as I said, I feel that this can generate humor.

Perhaps you don’t appreciate this because you are a particularly perceptive viewer and you had already noticed these things before they were explicitly stated in the parody. So to you it seemed obvious and trite but to most of us it seemed like a fresh perspective and we could appreciate the revelation.

17

Scary Movie was OK. Scary Movie 2 was not so good.

However, I think the third and fourth installments are hilarious. They are the very definition of parody movies. I watch them a couple times a year just because I always seem to pick up some little element of parody that I had forgotten.

NATM has some great scenes and lines, but doesn’t hold a candle to SM3 and SM4.

(I’m 12 YO at heart.)

18

I’m not a big fan of Scary Movie and I don’t think I’ve seen any of the sequels. I think it’s because I fall outside of the target demographic; I’m not a big fan of the slasher genre so I don’t get the references they’re parodying.

19

I’ve never had any interest in, or even seen, a teen movie.

I’m way too intellectual and mature and snooty for those, but for some reason, I started watching Not another teen movie. I caught myself laughing, and put away my laptop so I could give it full attention (the ultimate 6-Star review).

I loved the way it played with tropes, but still had genuine humor and characterizations, and I still replay scenes from it in my head.

20

They are not considered good parody movies, or even good comedies. Basically they are reference comedies, that get their attempt at humor by making reference to existing films, but not actually parodying them or make a joke. The main reaction is "Oh, look. That’s a reference to Psycho. That’s a reference to Alien., et al. ad infinitum.