Some people might call it mockery, other’s might call it a spoof, in any case it’s just funny when one movie decides to borrow material from another to make light of a situation. It breaks up the tension of the original movie and gives it a lighter touch really, especially if the original movie is something extremely heavy in nature. It’s not hard to see when a spoof is being made either since they make it plain as day.
And usually it’s extremely funny. It’s not always mockery.
5. Disco Dancing – Airplane/Saturday Night Fever
Some movies spoof a lot of other movies throughout the feature. In Airplane there were a lot of moments when you could see where the director had borrowed from different films and incorporated them into the movie in his own way. For the most part they worked, but comedy is such a fluid thing that what worked back then might not be quite as funny now.
4. Staircase shootout – Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult/The Untouchables
This is a good example of overkill. It’s funny, no doubt about that, but when you get a terrorist strapped with dynamite, disgruntled postal workers, OJ catching multiple babies as they go flying through the air, and then various other protected figures making their way quickly down the stairs you start looking at your watch and wondering when the joke’s going to end.
3. T-Rex scene – Wayne’s World 2/Jurassic Park
There are spoofs, homages, and then there are blatant rip-offs. Of coursed Wayne’s World wasn’t the only film to take this scene and run with it. Jurassic Park came out just a couple months ahead of this sequel but obviously they were doing their homework to get this shot included. If you’re scouting out a venue and you run into a T-Rex it’s safe to say you should keep scouting.
2. Head spin – Toy Story/The Exorcist
A lot of kids didn’t really get this reference and that’s just fine because if they did you might want to question the parenting techniques of their mom and dad. This was taken right from The Exorcist, but thankfully Woody isn’t bearing any horrific wounds and he doesn’t look like he wants to eat Sid’s still-beating heart from his chest. Oh, and the absence of projectile vomiting is good too.
1. Lightsaber Battle – Spaceballs/Star Wars
Hands down one of the best scifi spoof movies EVER. Mel Brooks really knows how to take slapstick to a level that few people have ever mastered this well. The Schwarz is just as powerful as the Force in this hit classic and unlike Star Wars all you need is a ring. Well that seems simple enough. The film spoofs other scifi cultures like Star Trek, Alien, and Planet of the Apes as well, but the overall reference to Star Wars is just awesome.
Spoof movies aren’t meant as mockeries really, they’re supposed to be funny takes on popular culture that fans can enjoy and laugh uproariously at. For the most part these movies are just made to show a lighter side of their parent film.
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