80 - Not Another Teen Movie

Connection To JOE DIRT - Jaime Pressly.

In time to come when all the spoof movie movies get lumped together as the scraping of the bottom of the barrel for parody, it will be a shame for the genuinely funny ones in the bunch, it to be fair is films that would pre-date Date Movie, films such as this teen spoof Not Another Teen Movie.

Not Another Teen Movie parodies unsurprisingly an whole bunch of teen movies particularly the comedies (so I guess it does fall into the trap of spoofing something already funny - but at times at least as a new joke to with it, also it parodies the more earnest scenes of these comedies)

Jake (Chris Evans - doing a better Freddie Prinze Jr. then Prinze Jr.) makes a bet with his friends to turn Janey (Chyler Leigh) into prom queen even though she has glasses, a ponytail and paint covered overalls, so yeah the basis is She's All That with scenes or characters mimicking among other teen movies such as American Pie, Can't Hardly Wait, Cruel Intentions, The Breakfast Club, 10 Things I Hate About You and Bring It On among others, yeah it's noticeable that most of the teen movies are from the 3 or 4 years before

The best characters for me are Mia Kirshner as Catherine, taking off Sarah Michelle Gellar's character in Cruel Intentions as Jake's sister (only by blood), she does still get to be sexy for the most part even when doing ridiculous things (the brother/sister incest thing is tiny bit ironic since Chyler Leigh kissed her real brother on film, since they played love interests in Kickboxing Academy), another enjoyable character was Sam Hungington as Ox (taking off Chris Klein's Oz from American Pie) I just love how he plays the performance

My favourite scenes including Ricky reading 10 Things I Love About Janey in class, the musical number (showing Disaster Movie how a musical number featuring the cast should go) and I like Jake trying to save Janey's brother from bullying.

The films worst scene for me, and is the scene that takes toilet humour literally as the three horny freshman characters spying on a girl on toilet who ends up getting discussing, this is not the worst part but the scene ends with the English teacher among others getting covered in shit, the scene goes on way too long for a pay off that is more disgusting and funny.

Overall, because plenty of the jokes hit the mark and everybody plays their characters so well, the film ends up being so damn enjoyable for me.

61 - Disaster Movie

Connection To THE SILENCE OF THE HAMS - Tony Cox

61 movies... 61 movies... SIXTY ONE BLOODY MOVIES... So 61 movies is what it took for me to have the urge to turn the film off within 5 minutes - it was the moment "Amy Winehouse" showed up that made me just want to give up there and then...

But I decided to go on... yeah I should have just turned the film off at the beginning. For a start, what the "filmmakers" Seltzer and Friedberg seem to think a disaster movie seems to be different to what I think a disaster movie is - in fact a better title would be "2007-2008 Movie" as that's when all the references are just about pooled from so in some ways this film is a time machine of a period of popular culture I don't exactly have the nostalgia for (just yet). Anyway I'm not here to get on the bandwagon of the Seltzer and Friedberg hate I'm here just trying to see how I feel about a film I've heard so much awfulness about.

The film opens with the captain 10,001 which to be honest just reminded me there was a film called 10,000 BC (that was released in yes 2008) which I have thought about as a film not at all since then which is where we meet Amy Winehouse - now my hate for this bit has nothing to with her death that came later but just how awful it all comes across, I was alone watching this (didn't want anybody else finding out) and I just cringed...

We soon get a party which introduces us to the characters some of them main but firstly we have Juno (I guess unwanted teenage pregnancy is some sort of disaster...) who seems to think Juno was sardonic while in the film she was really more hipster, as well as characters based from Wanted, Superbad, No Country For Old Men and even have a scene aping High School Musical, what year was this made again?  Anyway during this party we also get acting heavyweights Kim Kardashian and Carmen Electra having  a cat-fight, Kardashian I must assume as had a boob job but if not you go girl, this scene did nothing for me because neither are my type.

On the streets with all the meteors and shit going by we get the chance to meet even more characters such as Hannah Montana (the scene with her is almost verging on funny but doesn't quite get there), Hancock (predictably bangs his head trying to fly off), we also get a bunch of bikini clad models running from the chaos where one of them literally shits themselves (that bit there is probably the perfect example of the humour in this movie), then they go to a shelter where the Sex and The City girls are... and get this the person playing Carrie Bradshaw is a MAN... HA HA HA

What do you say - as this film only being on 30 minutes??? I was really, really hoping all this would get us to the end of the movie.

Back on the streets and it's more references including from Enchanted (in fariness the impression is pretty good though), followed by an overlong parody from Step Up (I have never seen any of the Step Up films but they keep saying step up to remind us) which is ended by a twister, which reminds us this is mean't to be about disasters which fucking brings out skinny Iron Man who gets crushed by a cow... FOR FUCK'S SAKE then Hellboy comes and he also gets crushed by a cow SERIOUSLY at least The Incredible Hulk loses his shorts (like the oldest joke there is) before getting hit by a cow, at that point I was I was expecting Batman (since Dark Knight came out in 2008) but nope.

The rest of the movie does features characters of references to (yes) Batman, Indiana Jones (tiny and played by Tony Cox), Alvin and The Chipmunks (overlong), Prince Caspian, The Love Guru, Kung Fu Panda and Beuwolf among others

Overall as a comedy it's a dis... (nearly said it), it just throws a barage of unrelated references at a wall and hopes that something sticks, which reminds if the "comedy" isn't about references to stuff of the moment then it's a poop joke. when I'm an old man though in years to come I can watch this and instantly remember what 2008 was like though, so that's... good... I guess

And then the end --- I'M DATING MATT DAMON - what's the bloody point of doing a parody of a song that was dirtier and funnier to begin with. Maybe it's worth watching it because it features all the parody characters so can save you watching the entire film!

60 - The Silence Of The Hams

Connection To POSSE - Billy Zane

The common misconception is that when Friedberg and Seltzer started getting their hands on the spoof genre is when it went to shit, I've even heard the statement "spoofs aren't as good as they used to" but the truth is even before they got there grubby mitts on the sub-genre, there was plenty of spoof that was less then classic - Plump Fiction, Mafia, Repossessed - are among those, the truth is actually for every Airplane or a Naked Gun there was films just fleetingly funny or downright poor.

The Silence Of The Hams, which to me is such a groan-worthy name for the film, seems tone of the most forgotten of the mid-90s spoofs and is something I did see on TV back in the day, truth is all I remembered though was Billy Zane and his name being a play on Jodie Foster and Dom DeLuise as the Hannibal Lector character, and though it's listed as 1994 on the internet I could of swore it came out in the UK in 1996, which I just checked on, so good memory there.

There's scenes that spoof the interrogation scene in Basic Instinct and the cell scene in The Silence Of The Lambs, anybody who has seen Loaded Weapon, which predated it by a year will know these scenes have already been spoofed. The two films it really spoofs most is of course Lambs and Psycho and besides them there is spoofs of Bram Stoker's Dracula and (rather on the nose) The Addams Family.

I found myself smiling at a far few parts of this movie, mostly with my eyes rolling at the same time. The film is bad, but it was so enjoyably bad, I was right about the Billy Zane character - he is called Joe Dee Fostar, I'd totally forgot about Ezzio Greggio being one of the stars (he also directs and writes), I think he's the weakest part of the cast, struggling a bit with English, but there is an awesome cast here including Martin Balsam apeing his Psycho role (this was a very late in his career role), and small roles for Shelley Winters and Mel Brooks among others. Tony Cox who would appear in some of those Selzter Friedberg spoofs a bit later also a very small role. For me though John Astin (this is like the fourth film I have watched with him in) and particularly DeLuise have the funniest moments for me.

Overall, groan worthy very often but oddly entertaining, it made me smile and was on the verge of making me laugh out loud, so to me it was actually better then I remembered.

38 - Spy Hard

Connection To SOME GUY WHO KILLS PEOPLE - Barry Bostwick

Like it our not, Spy Hard at least in part will go down in history as the first film written by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who where 2 of the 4 writers on board, who will go down in history for their infamous spoofs Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie and more recently The Starving Games (watching the trailer was enough for me) which parody sometimes the genre there meant to be but whatever's popular in pop culture at the moment - "Miley Cyrus" and "Amy Winehouse" have appeared - and their film parodies are often what they call shallow parodies, many people put them below Uwe Boll in the crimes against cinema list.

So what is a film like that people saw before Friedberg and Seltzer where known as the Antichrists - well looking back now there's references to films of the mid-90s but the year they pool the references is a bit wider (years wise) then some of there later stuff - there's parodies of Speed, Home Alone, Sister Act and In The Line Of Fire - among others and the movies spoofs James Bond obviously, which is weird because Bond is a film that never took itself too seriously.

Spy Hard is a mix of comedy that is funny at times but then plenty of jokes can be seen a mile off, you can tell they tried to do what worked for Naked Gun or Airplane among others but the writing just isn't up to ZAZ quality, Leslie Nielsen a veteran of them movies is obviously a plus playing the role serious and it's hard to dislike a spoof if he's the one doing it. 

I think my opinion when I first saw it did as a spy spoof that was until Austin Powers came along which was gut bustingly funny (which obviously didn't know was coming at the time).

Overall Friedberg and Seltzer hadn't developed the bad habits (for films that continued to be bewilderingly successful) so this is better then that pact (save the next film they wrote for Scary Movie) and the groans to laugh ratio way outweighs any of them.