The surreally incompetent Not Another Not Another Movie is beneath contempt
Dispatches From Direct-To-DVD Purgatory is a periodic check-in on what’s going on in the world of movies that didn’t make it to theaters.
Not Another Not Another Movie (2011)
I have a friend who spent one exceedingly lucrative day many years ago pitching jokes for a Seltzer-Friedberg production that will go unnamed, in part because my friend was forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement attesting that he would never publicly attempt to claim credit for the work of the most reviled duo this side of Leopold and Loeb. My friend described the experience as one of the worst in his professional career, 10 hours of misery where he and 20 or so other grotesquely overqualified, expensively dressed gag-smiths brayed obnoxiously at each other’s asinine suggestions and generally pretended not to hate themselves and each other for degrading the art of film and the art of comedy in one fell swoop. My friend does not drink, not even a little, but after he left the meeting he was sorely tempted to get blackout drunk in an attempt to purge the experience from his mind.
Spoof movies, as practiced by the cultural blight that is Seltzer-Friedberg, aren’t just troubling from an aesthetic viewpoint. They’re horrifying from a moral standpoint as well. The parody of the Zucker brothers and Mel Brooks is defined by love, knowledge, and appreciation: The Zucker brothers and Mel Brooks love, know, and appreciate the source material they’re spoofing enough to get all the details perfect. The comedy of Seltzer-Friedberg, in sharp contrast, is defined by contempt: contempt for the attention span, intelligence, maturity, and frame of reference for the audience, and an even more raging contempt for the source material they’re spoofing. Friedberg and Seltzer aren’t writers; they’re comic terrorists who cavalierly destroy what others create for their own ugly self-interest. Their success is entirely dependent on making comedy a dumber, crasser, less dignified place.
Spoof movies have such a dreadful reputation, and deservedly so, that when an interviewer for Hitfix brought up Scary Movie 5 during an interview with Marlon Wayans, who was promoting A Haunted House, Wayans was quick to point out that his film wasn’t a spoof at all but rather a found-footage horror comedy with “parodistic elements,” bitchily boasting that his film came from “an authentic place” and is a “labor of love” that illustrates an oft-overlooked type of comedy, in sharp contrast to the Scary Movie sequels he accuses of “doing it wrong.”
Marlon Wayans made a fortune playing a little person who masquerades as a baby in Little Man and a black man who masquerades as a white woman in White Chicks. But even he was palpably insulted to be lumped into the current wave of trashy “spoofs” he helped kick-start with Scary Movie, an all-too-influential surprise blockbuster, the screenwriting credits of which happen to include gentlemen by the names of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer.
Having Marlon Wayans slam your film for being hacky, soulless, and crass is like being publicly dressed-down by the neighborhood crack whore for possessing an unforgivable dearth of class and propriety. Spoof movies are seen as such a cancerous boil upon the face of cinema that even Marlon Wayans wants nothing to do with them.
Spoof movies may be beneath contempt (though I would argue their enduring popularity and profile make them eminently worthy of contempt), but are they beneath parody? That is the terrifying query posed by Not Another Not Another Movie, a surreally incompetent, inherently failed attempt to parody a parody, whose official website crows:
“Led by an all-star comedy cast of colorful and quirky employees, this film promises to keep viewers rolling in the aisles as they watch the downfall of a movie studio willing to do anything to make a buck, even if it means ruining its reputation and running the entire movie industry into the ground. When Sunshine Studios is faced with making a hit or closing its doors, the company puts everything on the line to make the biggest parody of all time. With no script, no name, and no idea what they’re doing, they set out to make Not Another Not Another Movie.
Following in the footsteps of highly successful, audience-favorite mockumentaries like Waiting For Guffman, Best In Show, and The Office… Not Another Not Another Movie is the first of its kind to lampoon the parody industry. In this hilarious non-stop ride we follow Sunshine Studios, the absolute worst film company on the planet, a studio that produces such wonderful films as Vampires In Mexico 2, Attack Of The Bulldozer, and Titanic 2: The Ghost Story.”