Not Another Teen Movie

It's gross, stupid, and raunchy and I love it! And you can tell that everyone involved had a great time, and that just adds to the experience. It also helps that I am a fan of a few of the movies that they make fun of like Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. And even the stuff that isn't exactly funny gets a laugh out of me because it's all over-the-top in the best way.

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.

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.

The days of Airplane and Naked Gun are over. Nowadays, we have the Scary Movies, Spy Hard, Date Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, etc....of all of these, Teen Movie is quite easily the best one. The point of spoofs and satires, to me, are not just to take familiar scenes and do something retarded and gross with them, but instead to actually make fun of all the things in the original movies that, while watching them, we all turned to our friends and said "wait a minute, thats kind of stupid". Teen Movie does this extremely well. How many of us lucky movie fans who saw She's All That had trouble seeing why everyone in the movie thought the lead actress was ugly just because she had glasses and a ponytail? She was still a babe! How many of these teen movies give the main lead actress a friend who is clearly into her, but she always seems to ignore any possibility of romance between them, instead pursuing another character and asking for her friend's help/advice? How many people thought the characters in Cruel Intentions were just sexually over the top to the point of being absurd? Teen Movie pokes great fun at all of these flaws. It is, unlike many other movies that attempt to be like it, a true satire, taking characters and not just doing stupid things with them, but exaggerating the traits of their serious counterparts and, when it comes down to it, just making fun of them. It has surprisingly good plot cohesion while still making fun of a variety of teen movies. I suppose the best way to distinguish this movie from all other modern spoofs is that this one is truly intelligent. Sure it has some stupid jokes, and toilet humor (that I admit I chuckled at in disgust like the diarrhea scene and the lesbian kiss with the old woman), but it also has some very clever jokes, like when is it appropriate to start a slow clap, why do these teen movies seem to only have one black character, and how silly is it that things slow down for emphasis when the beautiful female lead enters the room. Please, give this one a chance. If you've seen the other modern spoofs, I'm confident you will appreciate the noticeable and subtle differences between them and Teen Movie that make the latter much more enjoyable and palatable to watch.

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.