Not Another Teen Movie Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)December 17th, 2001
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There is, apparently, a very fine line between parody and suckiness. Spoof films, by definition, take ideas one step further than their predecessors. Not Another Teen Movie goes an extra couple steps, and it all comes off as frantic desperation. It has never been more clear that the spoof genre (and I can't believe one even exists) is the absolute laziest form of comedy. Or at least has the potential to be the laziest. Scream was intelligent, and a rare exception. Scary Movie was not, but still managed to be much fresher than both its sequel and Teen Movie.
Teen Movie, originally titled Ten Things I Hate About Clueless Road Trips When I Can't Hardly Wait to Be Kissed, was co-written by two of the brilliant minds behind Scary Movie, and its gags have an even lower percentage-of-accuracy rate. Set at John Hughes High School (home of the Anthony Michael Dining Hall), the main story centers on the She's All That-esque tale of the popular jock who makes a bet to turn an ugly duckling into a prom queen by the end of the film.
The jock is Jake Wyler (Chris Evans), former star quarterback-turned-bench-warmer after a particularly grisly incident the previous season (it's one of the film's high points), and his makeover victim is Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh), a tofu-eating, Bikini Kill-listening, Sylvia Plath-reading girl who is considered a dork because she wears glasses, overalls and a ponytail. Underneath, of course, Janey is an even bigger fox than Rachael Leigh Cook was in That (and, for some reason, she has a crush on Freddie Prinze, Jr., which doesn't fit the character at all).
About 90 percent of Teen Movie's jokes have to do with either sex or shit, which I certainly don't have a problem with, as long as they're funny. Most aren't worth much more than a grimace, however. There's a female take on American Pie's sock masturbation scene, a cheerleader with Tourette's syndrome, and a funny (because it's underused) bit about an undercover reporter posing as a teacher (a la Never Been Kissed). But the bits I found the most humorous went over like anthrax at my screening, which was packed with kids who howled at the borderline-funny spoofs on more recent films like Bring It On and 10 Things I Hate About You. The references to "older" films, like The Breakfast Club and Risky Business, sailed right over their Ecstasy-addled little heads. Ditto American Beauty and Almost Famous, which you don't really expect to see referenced in a picture like this. For that reason alone, I think the filmmakers drastically miscalculated their potential audience.
Teen Movie was co-written and directed by Joel Gallen, the guy responsible for some of the funny spoofs during the MTV Movie Awards (like this year's The Mummy Returns and the Ben Stiller version of M:I-2). It appears that his work is effective only in small doses. Non-script-related highlights include a lot of crappy '80s music being remade by current artists (like Marilyn Manson's "Tainted Love," and Stabbing Westward's "Bizarre Love Triangle"). And there are some decent cameos, including Paul Gleason, Lyman Ward and even Molly Ringwald. And if you don't know those names, it's back to John Hughes High for you.
1:37 - R for strong crude sexual content and humor, language and some drug content
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