Watched: 05/19/2025
Format: Prime
Viewing: Second
Director: Joel Gallen
I mostly missed the wave of teen movies that arrived in the late 1990's. And the ones I did see, I only partially remember at this point, and/ or am unsure if I watched them all the way through.
I'm not even sure if Not Another Teen Movie (2001) closed out the cycle or not. What's curious about this movie is that it kind of helped launch the terrible movie-spoof cycle that would morph into the terrible Scary Movies flicks and other spoofs.
It's an interesting movie for a lot of reasons. It sits at the dead-end of casual nudity in movies, Rated-R movies aimed at high schoolers (and, yes, children, we had lots of Rated-R movies aimed at teens), and movies just not giving a shit about teens having sex. The comedy is the sort of stuff that led twitter to find the biggest pearls it could clutch, as it's the 90's "what is the absolute worst thing we could do here?" style of comedy that Gen-X really refined and shared back to the world just in time for the world to say "dear god, what is wrong with you people?"*
The movie does seem like someone studied the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker movies with great gusto. You can certainly feel the influence, with straight line delivery, background gags and committing to the structure of a teen movie.
It does spoof a lot of movies, from John Hughes movies - of course - to the popular ones of the moment - Cruel Intentions, Varsity Blues, Never Been Kissed, American Pie, etc..., to a gag reference to Better Off Dead. It knows the tropes, the famous moments, the weird way those movies work and are emotionally and intellectually dishonest...
It's also a study in young Hollywood of 2001. Who we thought might be a big deal didn't necessarily end up that way. Chris Evans is the lead male. Chyler Leigh did six years on Supergirl and is on a popular Hallmark TV series with Andie MacDowell. Jaime Pressly shows her comedic chops. Mia Kirschner plays Evans' sister. Samm Levine. Sam Huntington. Jon Benjamin is there for about 30 seconds.
The cameos are wild. Mr. T! Randy Quaid! Ed Lauter (hilarious)! Molly Ringwald (that one I can't believe)!
Chabert plays one of the character's dream girl who mostly just has to come in and hit her mark, and has one hilarious line. But it was also sort of Chabert's transition from "you know me as a young teen in Party of Five and Lost in Space, but now I need to be seen as mature". But she is still something like 18 in this movie and would be playing high schoolers still in 2004 with Mean Girls. But - she was trying to do comedy here for a window. And as discussed elsewhere, she has a great knack for it.
All in all, it's a surprisingly effective comedy for doing what it's trying to do. Maybe not ZAZ-level, and certainly not every gag aged like fine wine, but for something made as a reaction to a trend in cinema, it's pretty good as far as these things go.
*I have a list
This movie is a reminder that Jaime Pressly is a good idea, indeed
No comments:
Post a Comment