blueneumann at 2016-04-26 20:28:55:
No mention for "Robin Hood Men In Tights?" It might be one of my favourite spoofs. Maybe it's not in the same league as Blazing Saddles or Airplane, but it did something wonderful to me, it was a perfect combination of all the big Robin Hood movies that had come before. The Errol Flynn version, the Kevin Costner version, even the Disney animated version all coalesced into one sort of "ultimate" Robin Hood movie (no "serious" Robin Hood movie could pick and choose so blatantly). And it had as much fun in the movie as the people watching it. I think that's what a spoof does that no other movie can do, it can celebrate it's genre and the staples, the big moments, as blatantly as it wants because it doesn't have to take itself seriously. While I'm not a fan of "Not Another Teen Movie" (too vulgar and uninspired for me), they also managed to take all those big staples of the genre and make them exist together, all the characters are the main characters of their own movies and they all intersect with each other. The football player? He's in Varsity Blues, his cheerleader girlfriend? She's in Bring It On and so on and so on. Structurally, it worked, but emotionally? It fell flat. As the later movie movies proved, you can't just pile on knowing reference after knowing reference and string them together. A true spoof loves the subject matter (usually a unifying subject matter), but acknowledges the flaws but loves them all the same. I think you might have to be earnest to make a spoof, and earnestness isn't really a virtue anymore, we all have to be too smart for things, to look down on. Liking something is almost like a sign of weakness. I've always heard spoofs are "love letters to the genre." When's the last time it was cool or even acceptable to write a love letter?