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Joe Blevins 
"Don't I look handsome?"
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 Posted - 01/11/2007 : 00:48:39
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First of all, I think there should be at least a 10-year moratorium on spoofs whose titles consist of {fill in the blank} Movie. We've already had four Scary Movies, plus Not Another Teen Movie and Date Movie. The latest one, Epic Movie looks particularly cheesy and unimaginative, and yet there are two brilliant casting choices that almost make me want to see it.
(1) Kevin McDonald as Harry Potter. Judging from the trailer, McDonald has a good chance of being the best thing in an otherwise dismal picture.
(2) Crispin Glover as Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. Another inspired bit of casting. Willy Wonka's story has already been told twice on film, which is enough, but it will still be interesting to see what Crispin can do with this role. (If I were the filmmakers, I'd let him throw away the script and just make up his own dialogue.)
Yes, the movie will probably be horrible. But maybe the McDonald and Glover scenes might make good You Tube clips.
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 01/11/2007 : 07:02:21
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quote:
Originally posted by Joe Blevins
First of all, I think there should be at least a 10-year moratorium on spoofs whose titles consist of {fill in the blank} Movie. We've already had four Scary Movies, plus Not Another Teen Movie and Date Movie. The latest one, Epic Movie looks particularly cheesy and unimaginative, and yet there are two brilliant casting choices that almost make me want to see it.
(1) Kevin McDonald as Harry Potter. Judging from the trailer, McDonald has a good chance of being the best thing in an otherwise dismal picture.
(2) Crispin Glover as Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka. Another inspired bit of casting. Willy Wonka's story has already been told twice on film, which is enough, but it will still be interesting to see what Crispin can do with this role. (If I were the filmmakers, I'd let him throw away the script and just make up his own dialogue.)
Yes, the movie will probably be horrible. But maybe the McDonald and Glover scenes might make good You Tube clips.
The strange thing about Epic Movie is that some of the movies being spoofed aren't really epics: Nacho Libre? Borat? Why do these movies spoof other comedies that are funnier and more successful than the spoofs themselves? The Airplane and Naked Gun films never spoofed other comedies. |
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silly 
"That rabbit's DYNAMITE."
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Posted - 01/11/2007 : 19:12:33
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I thought the 'Epic' referred to itself, as in 'this movie has so much stuff in it, it'll be epic!'
I wanna see it, the same way I wanted to see Kentucky Fried Movie. As in, on video, at home, so I can stop and watch the Wiggles if it gets to be too silly.
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Joe Blevins
"Don't I look handsome?"
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Posted - 01/13/2007 : 21:47:30
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You're right. Borat doesn't belong in a parody of epic films. The screenwriters are just gratuitously including a "Borat" reference in their movie because the character is currently recognizable and hopefully good for a cheap laugh based merely on recognition. It's mere quotation masquerading as satire.
Is it possible to actually satirize Borat? I'd say yes, it is... but you have to go beyond mere quotation. It's not enough just to drop a Borat lookalike in your movie and have him say, "Niiiice." You have to have a viewpoint about Borat and about Sacha Baron Cohen's style of comedy.
Some of the reviews for Date Movie said that it was pointless trying to parody comedies. They attributed Date Movie's unfunniness to the fact that the movies it parodied were comedies to begin with.
Of course, it is easier to satirize movies that take themselves seriously. You just take serious movie characters and put them in ridiculous situations and see how they cope... or you take serious situations and deflate them by adding some element of foolishness. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and the Zucker/Abrahms/Zucker team have all built comedies on this premise. A great deal of the humor in, say, Monty Python and the Holy Grail is built on the fact that King Arthur and his knights insist on taking themselves and their quest seriously despite the ridiculous situations and characters they encounter.
But I'd say that for the adventurous satirist, it is also possible to do comedy about other comedies. In other words, comedy is fair game for satire. MAD Magazine has been doing it for years. There are elements of meta-comedy (i.e. comedy about comedy) in the TV work of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall as well as the stand-up work of Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman, and others. You can see the influence of their work in current TV shows such as The Simpsons and particularly Late Night With Conan O'Brien.
The problem is, based on their past work, I doubt if the screenwriters for Epic Movie are willing to go beyond mere quotation. To me, quotation alone is not satire. You have to have an opinion about what you're quoting. |
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 01/13/2007 : 23:48:07
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quote:
Originally posted by Joe Blevins
The problem is, based on their past work, I doubt if the screenwriters for Epic Movie are willing to go beyond mere quotation. To me, quotation alone is not satire. You have to have an opinion about what you're quoting.
You're absolutely right, but I disagree that Epic Movie, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, or Airplane are satires at all because none of them provide a point of view on a serious subject of human interest other than movie cliches. Monty Python's Life of Brian is closer to satire because it deals with serious issues (mainly religion) and takes a critical point of view on the matter through ironic comparison. I see Life of Brian as a comparison between religious worship and mob mentality. Satires like Life of Brian are often controversial and stir public debate.
Epic Movie is emulating the style started by Airplane, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. While these movies are often very funny, I wouldn't call them satires. These movies are spoofs; light-hearted homages to other things in the culture meant less to criticize than to poke fun. |
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Joe Blevins
"Don't I look handsome?"
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Posted - 01/14/2007 : 07:06:41
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I think we have a slight vocabulary issue here, GHCool. Trained by years of reading MAD as an adolescent, I'm afraid I sometimes use the word "satire" and "parody" interchangably. MAD always referred to its TV and movie parodies as "satires," whether or not they fit the actual dictionary definition of satire. There frequently was a strong element of satire in those articles, however. See MAD's devastating take on "Hogan's Heroes," for example, or its brilliant deconstruction of the sitcom "Hazel." MAD even used its parody of the movie Grease as an opportunity to ridicule false nostalgia. I agree that there is a difference between satire and parody. But parody, too, demands more than mere quotation. I think parody works best when the writer has a strong opinion about what he or she is parodying. Listen to Stan Freberg's 1950s parodies of rock & roll, and there is no doubt as to what he thinks about that music.
I would say that there's an element of satire in Monty Python and the Holy Grail more so than in something like Airplane. Airplane is just trying to be funny and doesn't really have a "point of view," so to speak (other than pointing out the absurdity of movie cliches), but I'd say that every Python film does, including Holy Grail. Take the "communist peasants" scene as an example. This sequence was definitely meant as a comment on modern politics, as John Cleese's DVD commentary makes plain. |
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 01/14/2007 : 07:54:55
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quote:
Originally posted by Joe Blevins
I think we have a slight vocabulary issue here, GHCool. Trained by years of reading MAD as an adolescent, I'm afraid I sometimes use the word "satire" and "parody" interchangably. MAD always referred to its TV and movie parodies as "satires," whether or not they fit the actual dictionary definition of satire. There frequently was a strong element of satire in those articles, however. See MAD's devastating take on "Hogan's Heroes," for example, or its brilliant deconstruction of the sitcom "Hazel." MAD even used its parody of the movie Grease as an opportunity to ridicule false nostalgia. I agree that there is a difference between satire and parody. But parody, too, demands more than mere quotation. I think parody works best when the writer has a strong opinion about what he or she is parodying. Listen to Stan Freberg's 1950s parodies of rock & roll, and there is no doubt as to what he thinks about that music.
I would say that there's an element of satire in Monty Python and the Holy Grail more so than in something like Airplane. Airplane is just trying to be funny and doesn't really have a "point of view," so to speak (other than pointing out the absurdity of movie cliches), but I'd say that every Python film does, including Holy Grail. Take the "communist peasants" scene as an example. This sequence was definitely meant as a comment on modern politics, as John Cleese's DVD commentary makes plain.
I forgot about the communist peasants scene. You are right about that. The witch burning and black plague scenes are also kind of satirical from a historical point of view. I would say MAD Magazine counts as satire as well.
As for Epic Movie, you are probably right in calling it a parody. Some scenes seem to fit Definition #1, but most seem to fit Definition #5 provided by my copy of the Random House Webster's College Dictionary:
Definition #1. "a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious piece of literature or writing [or, in this case, cinema]"
Definition #5. "a poor or feeble imitation; a travesty." |
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turrell
"Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh Ohhhh "
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Posted - 01/14/2007 : 22:58:26
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I was down in San Diego this weekend and saw the two dome like structures used in one of the Naked Gun movies where Leslie Nielsen is lamenting losing a girl and he says everything I see reminds me of her.
The two domes have nipple like tops and look like a pair of breasts - I rememeber when I first saw it years ago how funny it was becuase I had previously thought it was staged. |
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Epic Movie: I'm dreading it, but...
