Post by The Curmudgeon on Jan 9, 2009 13:01:10 GMT 2
I recently bought the Police Squad! DVD, the sadly cancelled after six episodes show that started the Naked Gun franchise, and its a joy from start to finish. The dead pan delivery from Leslie Neilson while chaos happens around him, the deliberately corny gags, the bizarre sight gags.. as Neilson himself says in an interview on the disc; it was cancelled because it was a program you actually had to pay attention to in order to enjoy it.
When you look back at spoof movies, there's always a clear indication of the genre that the film is parodying. With I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, it was the blaxploitation films of the '70s. With Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, it was the 40's Noir movies, Airplane was disaster movies and Hot Shots was action movies.. these movies were all spot-on with their respective parodies, obviously aping a genre that the director and writer loved.
Nowadays, the "spoof" genre isn't dumb-clever like the above were; they're not even dumb. They're just stupid, crass and, crucially, utterly unfunny. Written by idiots - for idiots.
The likes of Disaster Movie and Epic Movie and all those other fucking awful films don't even try and mimic their choice of genre. It's basically a series of irritating pop culture references squeezed into 90 minutes, performed by unfunny actors desperately mugging at the camera trying to get a laugh (and failing). If Neilson thought viewers in 1982 were too busy to look at the TV for 20 minutes, the directors here obviously think having 100 Paris Hilton gags in their movies will stop the idiots who actually watch this shit looking at their mobile phones for 10 seconds.
Thing is, can the spoof genre ever come back? It's now in such a dire state that the clever parody of Airplane etc is now long forgotten, and with Disaster Movie (thankfully) tanking at the box office, what studio would release another parody movie, no matter how well its written?
Thoughts?
When you look back at spoof movies, there's always a clear indication of the genre that the film is parodying. With I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, it was the blaxploitation films of the '70s. With Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, it was the 40's Noir movies, Airplane was disaster movies and Hot Shots was action movies.. these movies were all spot-on with their respective parodies, obviously aping a genre that the director and writer loved.
Nowadays, the "spoof" genre isn't dumb-clever like the above were; they're not even dumb. They're just stupid, crass and, crucially, utterly unfunny. Written by idiots - for idiots.
The likes of Disaster Movie and Epic Movie and all those other fucking awful films don't even try and mimic their choice of genre. It's basically a series of irritating pop culture references squeezed into 90 minutes, performed by unfunny actors desperately mugging at the camera trying to get a laugh (and failing). If Neilson thought viewers in 1982 were too busy to look at the TV for 20 minutes, the directors here obviously think having 100 Paris Hilton gags in their movies will stop the idiots who actually watch this shit looking at their mobile phones for 10 seconds.
Thing is, can the spoof genre ever come back? It's now in such a dire state that the clever parody of Airplane etc is now long forgotten, and with Disaster Movie (thankfully) tanking at the box office, what studio would release another parody movie, no matter how well its written?
Thoughts?
