Not Another Teen Movie

The IMDb ranking for this film is quite harsh in my opinion. OK, this film was never going to win an Oscar, but it's enjoyable throughout and has some very good laughs in it. I'm not a big fan of teen movies but I saw this and was impressed. It's light-hearted and not afraid to appear ridiculous (infact most of the time it does this deliberately) and it doesn't pretend to be "Just another teen movie", indeed it IS "Not another teen movie", it's a very enjoyable laugh at the expense of those films.

Don't expect your life to be changed by this film, but if you want simply a fun film to watch then you won't go far wrong seeing this one.

I believe that perhaps a lot of the criticisms of this film come from 90's-00 teens because THEY JUST DON'T GET IT! Most of the comedy in this film spoofs 1980's movies, with a few current barbs thrown in from more recent films. I am an 80's child, and I laughed so hard during this movie! I saw it with younger kids from the mid-to-late 90's, and they didn't get half of the jokes. The school cafeteria is named "The Anthony Michael Dining Hall." The school is "John Hughes High School." There are send-ups of "Risky Business," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," "Pretty In Pink," "Sixteen Candles," and an absolutely priceless scene that spoofs "The Breakfast Club," along with the original "Breakfast Club" principal, Richard Vernon, spouting almost exactly the same dialogue. Sure, there are much more recent films that are skewered, such as "Varsity Blues," (which was HORRIBLE) and "She's All That," (Which was EVEN WORSE.) There's an hilarious running gag spoofing "Cruel Intentions," in which the slutty sister will stop at nothing to bed her brother, high school football hero Jake Wyler, who makes a bet with his team members that he can turn plain-jain, boy-hating Janie Griggs into the prom queen. Sex jokes and excrement jokes run rampant, all hilarious. Jamie Pressly, who you might remember from Jerry Springer's movie "Ringmaster," is a total riot as head cheerleader Priscilla, who schemes to copy cheers from a rival school's all-black cheerleading squad, spoofing "Bring It On." And the siamese twins who win Homecoming Queen(s) is an absolute riot, especially when homecoming king Jake has to share a dance with them and the band sings "Put your heads on my shoulder...." TOO FUNNY! A hilarious movie, especially if you're high or drunk, and you KNOW what they are spoofing.

While it fails almost as often as it succeeds, there's so much going on here I couldn't help but like it. You REALLY have to be familiar with the material being spoofed, though. And part of the fun is ticking them all off in your mind if you're a movie geek like me.

NATM has two levels and target audiences. For teens who have seen all the recent flicks, it's a direct, Mad magazine style parody. For 30 somethings like me, it's an homage to the 80's flicks. The opening scene is an obvious "American Pie" spoof, but in a much more subtle way, it's drawing on "Sixteen Candles". To top it off, the scene is still funny even if you haven't seen either targets. Bruce (Sam Levine from Freaks & Geeks) is a parody of Seth Green's character in "Can't Hardly Wait", but he's also an homage to Long Duk Dong.

Several people have mentioned that kids probably haven't seen the old flicks and older people haven't seen the new ones. Well, if you're a kid, you don't need to have seen the old flicks to appreciate it as a broad parody. The 80's jokes tend to sit in the background- like the signs on the walls and the musical cues in the Molly Ringwald scene (which actually was a weak point IMO). And I've found that most people my age HAVE seen most of the newer teen movies. They came out just about the time we were starting to get married, buy houses, have real jobs. And they were a nice bit of nostalgia for our youth. Even if we didn't go pay $7.50 to see them, we've seen them on USA on saturday afternoon.

It's no accident the that soundtrack is almost entirely new, young bands doing covers of 80's songs.

As far as the gross-out factor goes, it's really not that bad. The filthy opening scene is forgivable because it's so dang funny. There is one gory joke on the football field. (A "Lucas" homage inside a "Varsity Blues" parody.) A sick unfunny scatalogical joke at the beginning of the movie pays off with a big laugh when it's turned around at the end. And the mother of all "poo" jokes is tempered by the fact that the victim is a delivering a tirade against "poo" jokes. And then there's granny's kiss- unfunny and nasty. But it's nowhere near the level of "Scary Movie". It's also nice to see a movie like this without any gay jokes or fat jokes. (There is a fat guy, but being fat isn't the joke.) Under the filth, this is a pretty gentle movie.

I avoided this when it came out, but another 30-something friend recommended it to me recently. I'd recommend it to anyone who old enough to have seen "Sixteen Candles" in a theatre...as long as you've seen most of the newer flicks as well.

Oh...LOVED the slow clap guy!

This is the type of movie that people instantly judge because of it's popularity. Teen movies have always been considered awful by a lot of critics and a lot of movie fans. Several people are annoyed to death by teen movies and dislike the overused stereotypes that they contain. Is it that annoyance that created this movie? Most people would say it isn't, and that it's just another reason to make another blockbuster teen movie. Personally, I think we'll never know.

What I know is that I went to my usual trip to the video store and picked three random movies without looking what they were. One of them were "Not another teen movie". I was expecting something horrible, but it wasn't so horrible after all.

I think the reason why people complained so much about this movie is that it appears to be a teen movie itself. It's very clear that the movie is made for young people who have seen the popular 80's and 90's movies. It is a parody, but certain people will tell you that it makes fun of certain classics that don't deserve this treatement. Also, they left out many other obviously bad 80's teen movies. Also.. Yes, it has bathroom humor. Yes, it has a lot of sex-related jokes.. And yes, it's full of actresses in their late 20's with big boobs pretending to be teenagers.

However, I think this movie's purpose is of course NOT to be intellectual and to bash movies in a smart way. It's just meant to be funny and entertaining. Even though some of the jokes are very vulgar, it is a funny movie and it does make fun of the most popular stereotypes that you can find in teen movies.

I like these sorts of movies. They seem easy to do well. "Scary Movie" is one I recommend and now this one as well.

There are a couple reasons why. The simplest one is that I have spend a thousand dollars and hundreds of hours or so watching all the movies that are made fun of here. This one movie gives me double the pleasure of that investment.

But there's something deeper. Slasher movies and their ilk are really high school movies. High school movies efficiently transport us in the first couple minutes to another world because it is not only a world defined by movies, but one that we experienced ourselves.

That world, though populated by human kids, is completely artificial. Every kid is playing a role; they have to because no kid has the raw material to build a life, so they copy one. Real kids play roles. So then they go to the movies and see those same roles displayed and shaken a bit but ever so gently. Movies create life which creates movies.

But modern kids (some of them anyway) and movie audiences are much more intelligent than in the past. They demand "folded" entertainment, movies that simultaneously engage them at the manipulative level and at the same time step outside the game and make fun of it.

That's what this is. It is a real teen movie made up of bits of what went before just like all teen movies. But at the same time it is an annotation on top of that, an annotation that blows holes in every element of it. So what if the ammunition is juvenile; what else would be as effective?

Unlike nearly all real high school and slasher movies, and unlike the stuff called spoofs, this movie actually has a satisfying end. What better than bringing out the big gun, Molly? What better than having her write and conduct the ending?

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.