The Epic, well I agree, it’s less than sh.t. I saw it once and never felt the urge to repeat.

The ads for Superhero Movie weren’t great, and Mazin – like most directors – probably had nothing to do with them. Chalk that up to the ad/PR/marketing department. But the movie itself was funny. It was funny in the way Scary Movie 1 was funny. And that’s what matters.

There’s two schools here. Brooks with high and low brow mixes and then there’s everyone else. Young Frankenstein isn’t at all the same movie that Airplane is. Who could get away with doing a spoof movie in black and white now anyway? Of course, I won’t even dig deeper into the difference between a specific story being spoofed v. a genre being spoofed.

The point is, Mazin is more talented than F/S, and I feel like his box office probably suffered because the marketing department chose to piggyback on a meme that isn’t actually drawing in that many fans. Like you said, if they had made a funnier ad campaign that didn’t mimic Epic Movie, they might have appealed to a real audience.

Just saying – if you told me I was no Mel Brooks, I’d feel flattered just to be in the same sentence with Mel Brooks.

Know who made great spoofs? Mel Brooks. Young Frankenstein was a spoof and it’s one of my favorite comedies of all time. That what Friedberg and Seltzer do is considered spoof craps all over Mel’s legacy.

They are baby-stepping their way toward creativity, people! Don’t impede their progress!

He’s posted as much on his blog about the difference between a real spoof and what Friedberg and Seltzer and their ilk are doing – which is just mimicry really.

Case in point:

When you check out Superhero Movie on IMDB, it recommends The Naked Gun, DEBS, and Spy Hard as movies you also might enjoy. When you look up Meet the Spartans, it suggests you try Date Movie, Epic Movie and Scary Movie 4.

Essentially, you’ll only like Friedberg/Seltzer fare if you already like Friedberg/Seltzer fare. Of coure, Mazin wrote for Scary Movie 4, but we all have off days right? Hell, Jim Abrahams wrote for Scary Movie 4.

And the title will be: Comedy Movie. Just a guess. And the only way to stop this scourge is to let it play out until they make Movie Movie. Once you go meta, you can’t go back.

the world is eager to know.

Look at the spoof movies of yester-year… Airplane!, the Naked Gun films, and even Top Secret!. Those movies are still for the most part funny today due to the fact the filmmakers didn’t focus on making a reference to what’s going on at the time. All these films are, are time capsule flicks. Tom Cruise is hot? Okay… let’s make a joke about him, not caring if five minutes from now nobody will understand/care about what we’re referencing. It’s sad.

I’ll admit, I did laugh at a lot of “Scary Movie”, and some of “Scary Movie 2″ (do I have to turn in my movie-lover badge now?), but those laughs came from things that DIDN’T play on the whole pop culture reference deal. That’s why I didn’t even bother with any spoof movie that came after it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go work on my script for “Internet Movie”… a feature length spoof about this post that will most likely go before the cameras in two years. I certainly hope the scene I wrote that takes place in an internet cafe where the two main characters discuss George Bush and how he relates to the Weinstein’s deplorable treatment of the film “Fanboys” is still fresh!

http://www.boxofficepsychics.com/2008/04/02/friedberg-and-seltzer-must-be-stopped-and-you-can-help/

Hopefully if enough of we movie pundits take a stand and spread the word our call to arms will be answered. These idiots need to be stopped, for the good of humanity.

Personally, I think parodying Hancock is even more pointless than satirizing Superbad. Excuse me while I channel a valley girl, but: Ummm, helloooo! Hancock is already a parody! (And one that doesn’t look particularly good, at that. Of course, there’s never been a good superhero parody film: http://tinyurl.com/38comq)