Do you think a revival of the spoof genre (parodies of films) would be welcome nowadays? A good laugh never goes out of style, even if humor's tastes change with time (and I think we need a good laugh in these days). There have been some pretty fun spoof films over the years: Naked Gun, Scary Movies, Austin Powers, Kung Pow. Spoof TV shows are more popular nowadays (Robot Chicken, SNL, In Living Color - does anyone remember that one?), but honestly an entertaining spoof film would be welcome too, providing of course that it is hilarious enough.
They overdid it with Epic Movie, Disaster Movie type movies. Audiences don't trust them and studios won't put the investment in. Last ones I remember being released in cinema were Haunted House 1 & 2? I didn't see them. Austin Powers was the last one to create a character that became a household name. Kung Pow found it's audience but didn't do well in theatres. It left cinemas in about 10 days.
I think it’s less there are no comedy directors in Hollywood and more that the genre has shifted to cartoons like South Park and Family Guy.
Perhaps so, but spoofs found new ground in TV and given the greater freedom of content they have there compared to theatrical film release, I don’t think they’ll come back anytime soon.
Yea, that's probably true. But, I mean, most of the old, great talent, is now retired. Not like Mel Brooks is going to be making a new film anytime soon. So, I think the best Hollywood is willing to do is TV for now. Plus, the spoofs we have had, really haven't been all that funny. 'blank-movie' ran the whole gimmick of spoofing into the ground. I doubt we will see anything good for quite a long while.
Yea, yea, Archer is pretty good, and I'm assuming Venture Brothers are still going, and good. Though, I haven't seen it in quite a long time. So, it seems to be just animated stuff right now.
Yea easily once people stop getting offended by everything and trying to get them cancelled and stop trying to force PC narratives and develop a sense of humor again.
My wife and I are huge fans of the Hot Shots movies (Part Deux, in particular), Police Academy, and Naked Gun films. Space Balls is also a classic. They don't make 'em like that anymore. That said, those movies feel like they're from a bygone era of slapstick absurdist comedy. The Scary Movie franchise and stuff like Tyler Perry didn't quite appeal to us, though. We feel the last thing that we saw that captured the same spirit as the old Leslie Nielsen and Mel Brooks era of spoof comedy was Angie Tribeca, which was only OK.
Yea, that's another problem, there really aren't a whole lot of great comical stars who can do slapstick and humor really well, while doing it all with a straight face. Which is what those movies are. Space Balls is a spoof that has a cast, for the most part taking all the silliness seriously. Which is what makes it funny. Which is what makes spoofs work. The reason why the scary/epic whatever movies didn't work, is that they didn't have actors who could do those things in a straight face. To make those things seem perfectly normal to them. At least, not in the way Leslie Nielsen could deliver. Plus, in this current era of Hollywood, everything would have to be humored to be super PC, and PC tends to not be funny. There are plenty of things to spoof, but in order to spoof something like, Captain Marvel, you're going to have to piss off a whole bunch of people who really in to this currently PC culture thing. Which Hollywood likes to avoid right now. So, without a new Leslie Nielson, and/or a new Mel Brooks, I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Would movies like Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans and Vampires Suck even count as spoofs? It's more like they do poor references than spoofs. I like the classics like the Hot Shots movies, The Naked Gun trilogy, Mel Brooks films, I love Kung Pow, it has many memorable quotes: Chosen one: I'll take a pound of nuts. Peanut seller: THAT'S A LOT OF NUTS!!! CO: O.O PS: THAT WILL BE $4 BABY, YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT?!?!?! Master Tang: (singing): Taco Bell, Taco Bell, product placement with Taco Bell, enchorito, nacho, burrito... The following are the movies in the last 20 years that I enjoy watching: Scary Movie Scary Movie 2 A Haunted House A Haunted House 2 Dance Flick Of all the (blank) movies made from those same two assholes, Date movie made me laugh.
I love these sort of movies, but sadly the humor changed over time and now I don't find newer movies funny anymore. I found proof when I found some old movies from the 80s,that I had never seen before and I laughed the same like in other movies like Hot Shots, Naked Gun and such, when I saw them the first time. Sadly they are only so funny on the first viewing, after that you know the jokes. I still fondly remember, when I first saw the naked gun and frank drebin and Dr. Mannheimer are tied up and frank tries to free himself, which was for the worst for Dr. Mannheimer. My stomach hurt from laughing. I want to experience such fun again. Sadly most comedies are not funny, they are just dumb. I don't know, perhaps the funniest jokes were already made? If you clearly see some joke was taken from a movie you've seen before, it's not funny anymore.
I think it depends on what they do. Take a film and do a joke version of it like Hot Shots and it could work. Hot shots was Top Gun but funny yet played straight. That is why it works. Kung Pow is a comedy version of a dubbed kung fu film. It is funny because it plays up tropes and goes outlandish. But something like Date movie or Epic movie fails because it is more scatter shot. It tries to blend 5-6 films and just make references. That is not funny and dates it horribly. Most of those jokes are old by the time the film us released. Look at one of the best ever Airplane. Did you know it is mostly a remake? There was a 1950s film Zero Hour which the Zucker Bros saw late one night. It was totally straight but was the same plot. In fact many lines in Airplane are from Zero Hour. That film works because it sticks to one plot and plays the comedy straight. It is mostly timeless. If they did a parody of a film or film series and played it straight, then it might work. Something like Fast and the Furious or superheroes.
I think you need to re-skin your drum. Anyway, sometimes types of comedy fall out of favour because of over-saturation: you can probably thank those Title!Movie jackasses for torpedoing spoof for a while as a movie genre. The other thing is that making movies is a bit obsessed with big spectacle and that costs money. Same thing happened in video games; we’re only now seeing a sort of resurgence of low cost but simpler styles of games, or midrange (AA if you like) video games from major publishers.
Deadpool Has an element of spoof movie about it but I would say it isn’t that likely to have a return at the cinemas anytime soon as anything that wasn’t Star Wars or MCU was struggling to make good box office money prior to this virus and now even less, so studios are not going to take expensive risks. I think this type of humour is flourishing elsewhere like for example in internet meme jokes and I would say that television shows currently enjoy a greater sense of creative control to do more varied things with storytelling than movies have recently and shows like The Boys could be described as a brutal and cynical spoof of the super hero genre.
The Boys is Garth Ennis jumping up and down screaming that superheroes suck. Luckily for him, he’s better at it than most shit merchants and made something at least engaging.
Isn’t that what all spoof movies are about if you strip it down? Sure many are more affectionate towards the thing they are making a mockery of and pointing out its cliche’s but it’s all the same thing at its core.
