Spy Hard, Scary Movie (partially), Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Meet The Spartans, Vampires Suck, and the upcoming The Starving Games and The Biggest Movie Ever Made 3D. None of them are good. The best among them is generally considered to be Scary Movie, which was composed of three screenplays mashed together. Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have yet to create a movie that rates higher than "bearable if you're doing something else while it's on". Why is that? Well, obviously, because they suck, but let's look a little harder at why they suck.
The movies are allegedly parodies. Let's start there. The first problem is that most of the time it's pretty obvious Seltzer and Friedberg have not actually seen the movies they are attempting to parody and instead think that just having seen the trailers they are qualified to mock them. As a result, their parody is shallow and witless and usually involves jokes of which everyone else has already thought, if there are any jokes at all and they are not just recreating a scene from the trailer with their own actors. Occasionally, they just steal jokes from other comedies and think that counts as doing a parody of said comedy. But I digress. To do a parody, you have to actually be familiar with the subject at hand. My policy on parodies is that they should be funny to anyone, but get funnier the more familiar you are with what's being parodied, something that simply cannot be true when the writers have not actually seen the movie or, quite often, not even looked up its summary on Wikipeda or IMDB.
Now, a quick side-rant before I continue. Most subcultures have a sense of humor about themselves. That is, the D&D players, the metalheads, the goths, the science fiction nerds--they are all aware that what they're doing is at least a little bit ridiculous. They take it seriously, just not 100%, and the people who do take it completely seriously are the ones that no one likes. Despite the stereotypes of these groups being composed of the rabidly antisocial and humorless, most of them are perfectly nice people who happen to share an affinity for a certain game or genre or style and the culture surrounding it. Back to the subject at hand:
As Mel Brooks said, "You have to love the things you parody." When a parody is made with love, it will itself be beloved. Many great parodies, such as Galaxy Quest, Metalocalypse, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and many episodes of Community are beloved by members of the culture they mock because of their affectionate touch. In fact, in many cases, they even work as part of the genre itself (Dethklok's albums have sold quite well; Batman: The Brave and the Bold has some genuinely touching moments; Galaxy Quest won a Hugo Award.)
On the other hand, more direct or Juvenalian parodies such as Shrek (yes, it's a kids' movie, but hear me out) are made with a great amount of bile and hatred for their subject of parody (in Shrek's case, for squeaky-clean Disney values), but these can still work, if not quite as well.
The Seltzerberg movies, however, do not do any of that. They are not motivated by feelings towards a particular film or genre, be it love or hate. They are motivated by a desire to make money. You'll recall in my Hot Chelle Rae rant I said "they don't want to make music, they just want to be musicians"; here, Seltzer and Friedberg do not want to make comedy, they just want to be comedians. The result is a creatively sterile and utterly ineffectual non-parody of nothing in particular.
Of course, some parodies work even despite this. Airplane! derives surprisingly few jokes from its genre of choice, aside from the overall story. Instead, Airplane! makes use of a premise the writers found to be naturally ridiculous and instead of a parody, most of the jokes can be though of as using the premise as a vehicle for the Zucker-Abrahms-Zucker style of comedy, and it worked. However, Seltzerberg fails at this because they do not write jokes. They write references. Airplane! uses plenty of references, but it always makes sure the reference doubles as a non-reference joke, even if it simply means ending the scene by having someone run into a control tower. Seltzerberg movies reference pop culture trends and quote famous movies without thought of context or humor, thinking that just by pointing at something else they are being intelligent.
Now, why the Seltzerberg movies continue to exist is the subject for a rant for another time, but I always find (and hope that others who read this agree) that one of the best ways to learn how to do something better is by watching someone else fail and learning from their mistakes. If nothing else, Seltzer and Friedberg have succeeded in providing a number of excellent non-examples of how to do a parody.
