a good parody can be a sort of backhanded praise to the original work or it can be completely mocking. What is your favorite? It can be a song, a poem, a book. I guess I’d say “Bored of the Rings” is mine, although even I admit it’s too long.
Forbidden Broadway has so many excellent ones it is so hard to choose. Just watch Christina Bianco’s send-up of Bernadette Peters in See Me On A Monday
For me it’s the movie “Galaxy Quest” which is a parody of Star Trek and similar tv shows. It’s hilarious and I can watch it again and again.
Bored of the Rings. It was the incentive that allowed me to finish the trilogy. “Five nine is your height and 180’s you’re weight/You’ll cash in your chips around page 88.”
I came in to mention this. Portions of this work are still permanently imprinted in my memory.
Alligator, Harvard Lampoon’s previous book parody (of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books), is nowhere near as good. Nor is the National Lampoon book parody Doon.
National Lampoon on What Every Young Girl Should Know About Sex. This booklet came out around 1975, and it stays in my memory and still cracks me up!
Michael MacDonald on MADtv did a solo sketch where he played Steve Jobs announcing a new Apple product.
It was a very flimsy metal bookshelf, called iRAQ. As it was slowly collapsing, “Jobs” kept turning to the audience saying, “It’s okay! It’s okay!” and he’d throw handfuls of cash at it. The more it collapsed, the more frantic “Jobs” became.
Finally, when it did fall down, he distracted the audience by saying there was an even NEWER product in the wings, which would be released soon. He pulls the drape from an athletic sneaker, and announces iRAN.
Priceless, priceless, priceless!
~VOW
Fear of a black hat, it’s the “This is Spinal Tap” of 90’s gangsta rap.
Mad TV’s Limp Bizkit Parody Posin, and my favorite, Raging Rudolph.
Also a fan SNL’s Oprah’s Favorite Things. (Best link I could find)
Blackadder’s Christmas Carol
Monty Python’s Life of Brian is probably my favorite movie ever. And I’m a Christian!
Nailin’ Palin…
Just kidding - it’s a toss-up between Galaxy Quest and The Rutles.
I adore Henry Fielding’s Shamela, a 1741 parody of Samuel Richardson’s 1740 novel Pamela: Or Virtue Rewarded.
Full title: An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews. In which, the many notorious Falshoods and Misrepresentations of a Book called Pamela, Are exposed and refuted; and all the matchless Arts of that young Politician, set in a true and just Light. Together with A full Account of all that passed between her and Parson Arthur Williams; whose Character is represented in a manner something different from that which he bears in Pamela. The whole being exact Copies of authentick Papers delivered to the Editor. Necessary to be had in all Families.
And very funny.
Another one for BotR.
Also, this morning I was rereading Dave Barry’s “teen vampire novel” (in I’ll Mature When I’m Dead). I always wonder how he ended up reading Twilight in the first place.
I was going to mention The Rutles too.
Also, Police Squad is an extremely funny show that doesn’t really parody any one other show, rather a generic parody of all the old police and detective shows in the 60s and 70s.
Something tells me I need to watch Galaxy Quest.
Young Frankenstein, of course. And Spaceballs deserves at least a mention here.
(Mel Brooks is rather . . . uneven when it comes to parody, IMO; he did the Robin Hood legend in When Things Were Rotten in the '70s and it was hiliarious – then he takes the same concept to the big screen and it’s lame!)
Airplane!
nm
Mitchell and Webb: Ambiguous Bond Villain
Bored of the Rings, all the way, if you are talking pure parodies. If you want to loosen the definition to spoofs, then it becomes a much wider race…