Death Of The Parody Movie

Well all I can say is thank god. "Disaster Movie" tanked at the box office this weekend, and I could not be happier. Hopefully, the bozos that keep making these brain dead movies will stop getting money to make them. Remember when the parody movie was actually funny? It's ok if you don't because there has not been a funny one in the theaters for quite some time. I have been trying to figure out what went wrong with this genre. I had the unfortunate experience of seeing the truly horrid "Meet The Spartans" in the theaters. The trailer looked mildly amusing, and my girlfriend and her daughter wanted to see it, so we went. I was amazed that I even heard anyone laughing. I laughed about 3 or 4 times the entire movie, and that is sad seeing as it is supposed to be a comedy.

"Date Movie", "Not Another Teen Movie", "Epic Movie", "Superhero Movie". All examples of parodies that wee not funny. The problem with these movies is that they try to jam too much into the movie. The parodies of the 70's and 80's worked, because they parodied a certain type of movie and stayed within the genre it was parodying. Just from watching the trailers for "Disaster Movie", you can see the movies they are poking fun at- "Iron Man", "The Incredible Hulk", "Juno", "Hancock","Sex And The City". None of those movies have any relation to the disaster movie genre, they don't belong in a parody of it. In "Meet The Spartans" there were video game jokes, Britney Spears jokes, Dancing With the Stars jokes? Come on, those have no place in a parody of "300". I could even accept going out of the genre you are parodying, if it were not for one simple thing-these movies are simply not funny.

It's really simple how this problem can be solved. First, stop giving money to these hacks that slap together these awful films. Second, before making a parody, go back and look at how good they used to be. "Young Frankenstein", "High Anxiety", "Airplane", "This Is Spinal Tap", "Top Secret", even "Spaceballs", were all good parodies of the genres/movies they were going after. They stayed within the genre, and took the time to actually make sure what they were doing was funny.

The parody film, for the time being, is dead. Let's hope that someone in Hollywood has the vision to make a good parody film and stop feeding us this garbage. What do you think on the subject of parodies?