Parodies found

It’s not easy to make a spoof film that’s better than the original

June 30, 2017 05:42 pm | Updated 05:42 pm IST

Back in 1999, I was browsing for laser discs in a Singapore flea market on a balmy Sunday, along with a fellow companion in crime when I came across a movie called Stiff Upper Lips (1998) that looked vaguely promising in the sense that it could have been a decent enough British period costume drama. Back home, pausing only to pour myself a wee dram, I popped the disc in. To my great delight, the film was indeed that, but not the way I imagined it to be. The film is a parody of several Merchant-Ivory films, including Maurice (1987) and A Room with a View (1985), and along the way lampoons several classics including Chariots of Fire (1981), Gandhi (1982) and A Passage to India (1984).

Set in 1908, Stiff Upper Lips is not only a send up of the British aristocracy, but also of their sexual mores. For example, while on a jaunt to Italy, Emily (Georgina Cates) enters Cedric’s (Robert Portal) bedroom and demands a sexual awakening, but he remains cold. In order to provoke him, she unfurls several potentially arousing words but the only one that gets him going is — Eton.

This is just one example of a parody movie. A clip, depicting a line of co-passengers lining up to hit a fellow passenger, from Jim Abrahams and David and Jerry Zucker’s Airplane! (1980), went viral not so long ago during the United Airlines passenger dragging fiasco. It’s essentially a parody of Zero Hour! (1957) and Airport 1975 (1974). The Zucker-Abraham team had earlier written John Landis’ The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) that is essentially a series of sketches sending up the martial arts genre, the western, soft-porn, blaxploitation and everything in between. And who can forget Zucker-Abraham’s Top Secret! (1984), a giddy mash-up of cold war spy films and Elvis Presley musicals and Abraham’s solo effort Hot Shots! (1991) that spoofed Top Gun (1986) and en route took down Gone with the Wind (1939), 9 ½ Weeks (1986), Dances with Wolves (1990), Rocky (1976) and Superman (1978), amongst others.

Any discussion on the parody genre would be incomplete without Mel Brooks. To name just three of his seminal works, Blazing Saddles (1974) spoofed the western genre; High Anxiety (1977) the cinema of Alfred Hitchcock, particularly Vertigo (1958), The Birds (1963) and Spellbound (1945); and Spaceballs (1987) the Star Wars,Star Trek , Alien and Planet of the Apes films.

The genre used to be a thriving one, but has somewhat waned in recent years. Keenen Ivory Wayans’ Scary Movie (2000) was a passable spoof of teen horror films, but the four sequels progressively ran out of inspiration.

And the self-explanatory Not Another Teen Movie (2001), Meet the Spartans (2008), Epic Movie (2007), and Superhero Movie (2008) just did not have enough gas in the tank to begin with.

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that for me personally, Rob Reiner’s music documentary send up, This is Spinal Tap (1984), that follows the misadventures of the eponymous fictitious British rock band, is the greatest parody film of all time.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.