Blast from the Past: Spoof Movies, Pt. 2

Last week, in Blast from the Past, I shared trailers from some of the best spoof movies of all time. Not surprisingly, most were from the masterful Mel Brooks, and some combination of ZAZ (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker), and we won't stray far from them here. This week's collection isn't quite up to the level of Part 1 by necessity. They were just the best. But there is some gold to be found here.



1. Naked Gun 2-1/2: The Smell of Fear - Police show parody - You'd think I'd put The Naked Gun: From the files of Police Squad! as my pick from the series, but no. The first in the series was the revival of the short-lived television show. It was funny, and provided fodder for the series, but was a little thin, especially toward the end. Part 2 was consistently funny, end-to end. Part 3 rehashed a lot from the original series, so Part 2 wins it. All are worthy of your time, and are responsible for Leslie Nielsen's resurgence, and Hollywood's belief that he'd make any movie funny. Here, it was true. ***

2. Hot Shots! Part Deux - Rambo/war movie parody - Like the inferior Airplane II: The Sequel, this movie put its title's suffix into the lexicon. If you hear "part deux" or "the sequel," that's where it came from. Unlike the latter, HS!PD is a worthy sequel, if slightly less so than its predecessor. This time, Charlie Sheen (in his prime) is aping both Rambo and Apocalypse Now, along with several other movies. He's helped along by Richard Crenna, Rowan Atkinson, Ryan Stiles and Lloyd Bridges. It kinda runs out of gas about 2/3 of the way through, but there are memorable gags throughout. Recommended. **-1/2

4.

3. Scary Movie - Scream/horror movie parody - The first in the series--by the Wayans brothers--is a gem, funny, filthy and a lot of fun. It closely follows the Scream movies, and parodies the crap out of them. Which is kind of funny, when you consider that Scream was sort of a send-up of horror films in the first place, and had the working title, Scary Movie. This movie also put Anna Ferris on the map, in the first of four in the series. The Wayans' take on what is essentially a white-centric movie genre is genius. ***

Scary Movie 3 - Parody of Signs and The Ring - Part 2 of this series was just terrible, mostly for Chris Elliot (decidedly not for every taste) and the fact that it strayed so far from the first movie. Part 3 took the series out of the Wayans' hands, and into David Zucker's. It was perhaps his last funny movie. Very funny, again with Charlie Sheen. But if you watch the outtakes, you'll see what a mess it could have been (and reasons why the movie is a little disjointed in places). Part 4, also by Zucker, has its moments, but is not worthy of this list. **-1/2



5. History of the World, Part I - Historical epic parody - This one doesn't rate in the top mostly because it is wildly uneven. There are moments--many moments--of genius in this film. In my storied pop culture consciousness, there are quotes from this film aplenty. But lo these many years later, it just doesn't hold together. I find myself fast forwarding in places. But the French Revolution, Spanish Inquisition and Roman Empire sections are golden. I'd tell you more but I'm on my wine break. Mel Brooks managed to pull this one up above the line, but not to true greatness. **

6. Spaceballs - Star Wars/space movie parody - Critics said that this movie was curiously late, 10 years after Star Wars. But, did they say that about Young Frankenstein, 42 years later? Anyway, that wasn't really my problem with it. It has funny, memorable moments. It is classic Brooks. But it's thin. It feels like an hour's worth of jokes, spread over 96 minutes. Makes the list for the many classic bits, but just barely. **



7. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life - Historical epic parody - This one is one of my favorites, but like History of the World (and Monty Python in general) is wildly uneven, and not for every taste. Uproarious in places, head-scratching in others. **-1/2

8. Shaun of the Dead - Zombie/horror parody - This one should really be in my first list, to be fair. It is perhaps the best of the bunch, since it works as both a superb parody, and as an effective movie of its genre by itself. Hilarious, tense, well acted, and well written. Certainly the most in-genre spoof movie, but closely tied with Young Frankenstein for authenticity. Simon Pegg made his name here. ****

See, they put him in everything.

Also rans: Repossessed, the Exorcist parody really tries, but too hard. Airplane II has its moments. Naked Gun 1 & 33-1/3 do too. The Creature Wasn't Nice (also known as Spaceship!) has some classic moments, but is kind of cheap. Don't be a Menace to South Central while Drinking Your Juice in the Hood is funny, but way outside my pop culture zone, as is I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (both are worthy, I'm just unworthy to review them). Austin Powers and its sequels probably qualify, but sort of became an entity unto themselves. Not Another Teen Movie has some very good jokes (and Chris Evans), but is responsible for. . .

Terrible spoof movies: Disaster Movie, Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie, Epic Movie, countless others, and the worst spoof movie of all time: An American Carol. Its spectacular badness is only rivaled by The Happening, which is possibly a spoof, but is so bad it doesn't matter.

And that's it for now. Have a great Monday, everyone!

Blast from the Past: The Best Spoof Movies of All Time (Part 1)

Image from Wikipedia.

So, I'm thinking of things for Blast from the Past today during my walk, and I came up with a great idea! And now, I have no idea what it was. But I still have a column to do. So, why not the best spoof movies of all time? It's one of my favorite pop culture things, and they're the kind of films you can watch over and over again. Unfortunately, today's generation has been fed a series of hideously bad spoof movies like Date Movie and Meet the Spartans. They really need to read this list, and check out some of the films on it, to see how it's supposed to be done. These are in no particular order, but I've given each a score on a * to **** scale.

1. Blazing Saddles (1974) - Western spoof. This is Mel Brooks' funniest film (his best is below), and he's chased it ever since. Don't get me wrong, I'm in awe of the man. But his best work was in 1974. The cast, Cleavon Little, Harvey Korman, Slim Pickens, Madeline Kahn, and especially Gene Wilder are sublime. The jokes are rapid-fire, and hilarious. The script (co-written by Richard Pryor among others) would never be green-lit today. But it will live on forever on video. If you haven't seen it, add it to your movie list. ****

2. Young Frankenstein (1974) - Universal horror spoof. Mel Brooks' best film by a mile, and funny too, if less rapid-fire than Blazing Saddles. Probably more quotable than any other film in history, this is a cinematic masterpiece. It's as much an homage to the original Frankenstein series as it is a send-up. Wilder is also at his best, and ably supported by Terri Garr, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman and Madeline Kahn. ****



3. High Anxiety (1978) - Hitchcock spoof. The last Mel Brooks film of the list isn't in a league with the first two, but is better than most attempts by others. And it holds a very special place in my pop culture noggin. I've loved this since I saw it (again and again) on TeleCinema, the precursor to HBO. Madeline Kahn doesn't enter until the second half, but is fantastic. Cloris Leachman is demented and very memorable as Nurse Diesel. Harvey Korman, Ron Carey, Dick Van Patten and many others are all pros. The more you know Hitchcock, the better you'll like it. ***

4. Airplane! (1980) - Disaster movie spoof. This is one of the funniest movies of all time, by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ). It's somewhat dated, having been shot in the waning days of the 1970s. But considering the heyday of disaster movies was the 70s, that actually helps with the humor. Robert Hays and Julie Haggerty are pitch perfect, but it's the unlikely comedic performances of Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen (at the time, not known for comedy), Peter Graves and Robert Stack that added an extra layer of brilliance. (Followed by a much lesser sequel) ****

5. Hot Shots! (1991) - Top Gun parody. Jim Abrahams of ZAZ was behind this one, and he loses nothing without the Zuckers. It's a riot. It spoofs far more than Top Gun, though it uses that movie as a framework. Charlie Sheen is terrific in the lead, and supported by many funny supporting actors, including Lloyd Bridges (again). (Followed by a decent sequel) ***-1/2

6. Top Secret! (1982) - Elvis movie/Cold War parody. ZAZ again, and this one is an odd one to try to describe. In addition to Elvis movies, and "behind enemy lines" Cold War movies, this one spoofs The Blue Lagoon, beach movies, westerns and even The Wizard of Oz! Scattershot, but oh-so funny. Val Kilmer--in his first major role--is fantastic: singing, dancing and hilarious. Not a lot of famous co-stars, though Omar Sharif and Peter Cushing are here, but it doesn't matter. It's the characters that make this one, and wow, what characters! Deja Vu, Latrine and Chocolate Mousse, just to name a few! This one is only marred by a too-abrupt ending. Watch it.  ***-1/2

And that's going to have to wrap it up for this week. More to come! In the mean time, have a great Monday!

Blast from the Past: Greenlee Gazette's Favorite Comedy Movies (Part 1)

There are so many, I can't narrow them down to just one batch. So here is the first in (at least) two parts!






#1 and #2-3/4 - Airplane! and The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (#1 - 3) - I'm combining these movies because the video I found does the same. In truth, Airplane! is at the top of the heap, and the Naked Gun series slots in slightly down the list. But I defy you to get any of these four movies, and not laugh. It's my litmus test for a sense of humor.

#3 - What's Up, Doc? - One of the funniest movies of the 70s starred (at their physical peaks) Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand, not to mention Madeline Kahn in her introductory role, Kenneth Mars, John Hillerman, Phyllis Albertson, Sorrell Brooke and Randy Quaid. It's a comic masterpiece, and if you don't think so, well. . .there's no hope for you. Represented here by one of the few embeddable videos I could find, a blooper reel.

#4 - Top Secret! - From the wonderful ZAZ! team (before David Zucker lost his ever-loving mind) was this under appreciated comic masterpiece, starring Val Kilmer at his absolute best. Not to be missed.

#5 - Ruthless People - Again, ZAZ! in one of their more straight-ahead comedies, produced this gem, starring Danny Devito and Bette Midler. It's one of the funniest movies of the 80s.

#6 - Young Frankenstein - Surely one of the most artistic and well-executed spoof movies of all time, Young Frankenstein marks the pinnacle (along with Blazing Saddles) of both Mel Brooks' and Gene Wilders' careers. Nothing short of perfection. Frau Blucher!!!

#7 - Blazing Saddles - Of course, with the last entry, I couldn't forget this one. Not only is this a spectacular spoof, an fantastic skewering of racism, and a masterful bit of film making. . .it's also a pop culture touchstone for its generation. Along with Young Frankenstein, this movie is so full of talent, so jam-packed with jokes and one-liners, the two films may have more quotable lines than any ten other movies.

Kennedy Center Honors Mel Brooks

I love Mel Brooks. Seriously. I think I've watched his films more times than virtually any others. Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs, Silent Movie, History of the World Part I and High Anxiety. I've been dismayed that movie wise, he lost his mojo after about 1980. Most everything after that was scattershot or even bad. But he got some Broadway mojo with The Producers and (again) Young Frankenstein. So good for him. Even though his glory years were only about 10 years in the movies, his career is much more than that, and he deserved the honor he got this week.



Edited to add one of my favorite scenes from the overlooked High Anxiety.

DVD Review: An American Carol

Let me start out by saying that some of my very favorite movies are those made by Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams and David Zucker (known affectionately as ZAZ), together or separately. Airplane!, Top Secret!, Hot Shots! (Part I and Part Deux), The Naked Gun series and Ruthless People have held spots in my video library in VHS, LaserDisc and DVD versions. I've watched them all many, many times.

Later works have been a little less classic (Scary Movie 3 and 4). But there's still some good stuff in there. Something happened to parody movies over the last decade or so. First, it seems like anyone thinks they can do it. Second, movie makers somehow got the idea that just putting Leslie Nielsen into a film would automatically make it funny. And lastly, even the old hands (Mel Brooks, David Zucker) seem to have forgotten what is funny. Case in point is An American Carol.

Somewhere along the way, David Zucker not only became a conservative, he decided that he could make it funny. He was sooo wrong. Or actually, trying to make a conservative's idea of what liberals think just isn't funny. At least not to a liberal. There must be some nugget of truth in comedy for it to work, and that's a big problem with this film.

The film centers on a film maker modeled after Michael Moore, played by the late Chris Farley's brother Kevin. The film maker hates everything about America, and all the patriotic trappings. He hates the military, boy scouts, and the 4th of July. Moore himself, in real life, is none of those things. But conservatives think he is. So basically, this film is a parody of a perception, which is kind of strange.

Eventually, after much pointless (and not terribly funny) slapstick, the film segues into a take-off of A Christmas Carol. Transposing the idea to Independence Day from Christmas is sort of jarring. And honestly, the story has had so many takeoffs over the years--from other movies to just about every long-running TV series for the past 30 years--it's pretty worn-out territory. Farley is serviceable as Moore, and the acting in the film is not the problem. It's what they're given to work with that is the problem.

Cameos and larger parts are made by several recognizable actors, including almost every well-known conservative actor in Hollywood. Kelsey Grammar, Kevin Sorbo, Leslie Nielsen, Dennis Hopper, James Woods, Robert Davi, David Alan Grier, Jon Voit and many others turn up. None of them is bad in their part. But, not only does almost every joke land with a thud (and the subtlety of an anvil), the subject of the humor never rises above the late un-lamented 1/2-hour News Hour from FOX "News."

Leslie Nielsen--one of my all-time favorites in about half his films--may be getting a little too old for this kind of thing. He plays "Grandpa" but looks like "Great Grandpa"--at least. Grammar as Gen. George S. Patton (an actual relative of mine) is the closest thing to funny in the whole picture. That has a lot more to do with him being a pro, than it does with the material he's given. Farley's character is so nasty and vile, I'm surprised Moore didn't sue for defamation. And I was just embarrassed for Grier as a slave in a "what if Lincoln didn't fight the Civil War" present day.

A 1968 musical number could have been funny, but suffers from the central problem: it's centered around what conservatives imagine that liberals believe. Parody is all about exaggeration. But this doesn't exaggerate the truth, it exaggerates ideas that exist only in the minds of the far-right's fevered imaginations. The very premise of a prominent liberal wanting to abolish the 4th of July is completely out of right-wing world. I'm aware that the film is intended for conservative audiences, not for me. But do even conservatives find this funny?

I should mention that I bought this DVD in a three-for-$10 bin at Hollywood Video. $3.33 is more than the film is worth though, sadly. The film pulled in a dismal $7 million (though it had a budget of $20 million), so I guess I'm not alone. I'm not sure how well the DVD itself did, but as a graphic artist, I must say the cover sucks. And that's being generous. The blurbs don't quite sell it, and the lack of a major studio's name anywhere on the box makes me wonder how this thing even got to DVD.

An American Carol is worse than Date Movie or even Disaster Movie bad. It's The Happening bad.

My review: Don't even get it for $3 just to see how bad it is. Just take my word for it.

Two-in-One DVD Review: Saw V & Disaster Movie

Image from Wikipedia

I actually got out of the house and got a few errands run, which is something I guess. And since there's no work tomorrow, I picked today for rest and laziness. While I was out, I got some cheap pre-viewed movies at Hollywood Video, knowing full well what I was getting: cheap entertainment.

I got a Ryan Reynolds picture called The Nines, which is supposed to be quite good, but somber. So I went with my other two picks for my lazy day. First up was Saw V. It's the most recent in a series of ridiculously convoluted "torture porn" horror movies. I'm not sure the creators of the original Saw had such a long "franchise" in mind when they started the whole thing. For one thing, they started out with a killer who had a terminal illness. This necessitated the actual death of the guy, drug out through the last two installments.

The series is actually inventive, and no doubt delivers the shocks and the gross outs. But it isn't just the Rube Goldbergian murder machines that provide the torture, logic and reason are tortured as well. The story strains to link all five parts together, with plot elements of part V supposedly having occurred before part I, with things going on behind the scenes we never knew before. This terminally ill man was very, very busy during the last days of his life. I enjoyed this movie the same way I did the rest: by buying them cheaply, and not expecting much. There are worse ways to spend an hour and a half. Saw VI, for example, out soon.

The other movie I had much less hope for, and it still managed to disappoint. Disaster Movie is also from a long series of movies, more-or-less loosely affiliated with each other. I suppose they date back to Scary Movie, itself a series, but I don't know if many (or any) of the same people are still involved. All of these movies were silly, bordering on stupid. All of them had up-to-date (and thus, now dated) pop-culture references, and out-of-left-field throwaway gags. But somewhere along the way, they really went off the rails.

Date Movie was the first one that sucked out loud. Even the usually outstanding Alyson Hannigan couldn't save it. Epic Movie was a skosh better, but that would take little effort. Meet the Spartans was dreadful, but had just enough funny stuff to be nearly enjoyable, almost all due to the star, Sean Maguire. Disaster Movie, other than being aptly named, is a complete waste of time. At this point, the whole string of movies seems to exist only to employ former members of Mad TV and midgets. There isn't a single laugh in the whole film. Cheap gay jokes abound, so it is ironic that the only worthwhile things in the film are star Matt Lanter (very cute), and you get to see Ike Barinholtz naked. Still, as terrible as it is, it's a better way to spend some time than The Happening.

Julie Brown Takes on Sarah Palin: New Song!

Photo from HX

I've loved Julie Brown (the funny one, not the untalented one) since I was shortly out of high school, which was way-y-y-y back in 1984. Video stores had just started popping up, and they had very little backlog--rentable video tape having just been invented and all. So after I got through every horror and sci-fi movie, I was down to the comedy section.

I found a "Comedy Videos" tape, and discovered The Hitler Rap by Mel Brooks, Where's the Beef? by Ruth Buzzi (a lame attempt to cash in on Wendy's Clara Peller), and The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun by Julie Brown. The last song was the best, and still is very funny (if you remember that school shootings were much more rare in those days, and when they did occur, they weren't rampages). The song is lampooning 50s and 60s "tragedy" songs much more than school shootings.

After that song, Julie had a series of other funny tracks like, Trapped in the Body of a White Girl, I Like 'Em Big and Stupid, Girl Fight Tonight! and my favorite, 'Cause I'm a Blonde. She Incorporated some of these songs into her movie, Earth Girls are Easy, also starring Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayons and Jim Carrey. She's been in several (usually short-lived) shows that belong in the category, Brilliant but Cancelled. And she's made me laugh all the way.

Most recently, Julie has taken to making fun of Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. A worthy endeavor by any measure, made better by the fact that she can impersonate Palin's voice and appearance very well. Not bad, considering she's a full decade older than Palin. Below is an audio-only YouTube video (I know, that sounds weird), of Julie's appearance on a recent airing of The Stephanie Miller Show, where she released the premiere of "The Ex-Beauty Queen's Got a Gun/The Girl V.P.'s Got a Gun."

It's very, very funny stuff, but feels a bit like a work in progress. The backing track is from the original song, with some words still audible. And the title needs work. But it's still Julie Brown, and I'll take her any way I can get her!

And here's the original, just for fun. . .

Airplane! Cast Reunites!

Airplane! is one of the funniest movies of all time, and is still funny 28 years after it was made. Yesterday, part of the cast reunited on The Today Show, and remenisced about the film. I'd post more, but I think I've covered this ground somewhere before. . .



Thanks to Stupid Monkey Planet once again for a great link.