Film Editorial: The Decline Of Western Civilization IV The Parody Years

VS.

I, for one, enjoy spoof films. Airplane, Hot Shots, The Naked Gun, Scary Movie, Robin Hood Men In Tights, Spaceballs and Young Frankenstien. However, do you notice a decline in parody films now-a-days? Films like Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie, Vampires Suck, Stan Helsing and The upcoming, The Starving Games. These films are less in quality than the former films. But Why? Well lets take a look.

Young Frankenstien was the first satrical film to parody a single movie, That being Frankenstien. The film was directed by Mel Brooks and starred Gene Wilder and is one of the funniest films I have ever seen. It takes the film Frankenstien and basically says "What would a situation be like if it happened this way?" "What if The Blind Man made a few slip-ups?" Those questions and more are answered  in the film. Not too long after, Airplane came out spoofing the film Airport. It was a monster hit and for good reason. The film was funny, smart, fast paced and had a brilliant performance with Leslie Nielson. Soon after The genre started parodying multiple films with one film. And It was done well. Movies like Top Gun and Superman The Movie are spoofed in Hot Shots and Cop Films and more are spoofed in The Naked Gun. It was great. Until something drastic happened.

In 1996 Their was a film released called Spy Hard, A film That parodied Die Hard, Pulp Fiction, In The Line Of Fire and So on. The film was OK. It had some bright spots and it had some dark spots. The film had more obvious and Gross-out humor, rather than smart and clever humor. However, the film was a modest success and was the new direction spoof films were taking. Films like Repossessed, Dracula Dead And Loving It, and The Silence Of The Hams were released but couldn't live up to the granddaddy's of spoof.

In 2000, Keenan Ivory Wayans released a film called Scary Movie. It was the first film since The Naked Gun 3 to be, what I consider, A funny movie. The film was obvious but a lot smarter than the spoof films that were coming out. The film was a lot grosser though. Filled to the brim with bodily fluids, sexual innuendos and body parts. But I gave the film 3 1/2 stars, praising it for taking a big risk. The film had 4 sequels, all of which I have liked.

2 out of the 6 writers of that film, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, branched out and wrote(I use that term loosely) and directed The Films, Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet The Spartans, Disaster Movie and Vampires Suck. All of these movies are terrible and should be banished from the world of Cinema. Sadly these are the quality of spoof films now(However I have liked two unrelated Friedberg and seltzer films Dance Flick and Superhero Movie). These films rely on Pop culture references and whatever is popular at the time. Meet The Spartans is 90% Pop Culture references.

Parody Is dying and we need to revive it. However, there are a lot of great song, movie and TV parodies on YouTube. Hopefully filmmakers can take note.