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Jeff's Review of:
Not Another Teen Movie

Dec. 14, 2001

2001, 1 hr 25 min., Rated R for strong crude sexual content and humor, language and some drug content.�Dir: Joel Gallen. Cast: Chyler Leigh (Janey Briggs), Chris Evans (Jake Wyler), Jaime Pressly (Priscilla), Deon Richmond (Malik), Eric Jungmann (Ricky), Randy Quaid (Mr. Biggs), Lacey Chabert (Amander Becker), Mia Kirshner (Catherine Wyler), Eric Christian Olsen (Austin), Paul Gleason (Richard Vernon).

As much as I love film parodies with plenty of sight gags (Airplane or Spaceballs anyone?), unfortunately I can�t recommend Not Another Teen Movie.

The problem? Approximately halfway through, many of the gags and references get too few and far between, and the movie gets bogged down as, well, another teen movie.

Even when there are gags aplenty, most of the time it�s just to see how far they can go with references to genitalia and sex, and language too raunchy for Cinemax (a cheerleader with Turrets Syndrome almost single-handedly takes care of this quota). Teen Movie went too far for my tastes. The smart humor was undoubtedly never written, as the art of parody has been long forgotten (Scary Movie anyone? Heck no.).

The cast was great. I don�t have any complaints there. They told the jokes and did the gross-out gags assigned to their characters. It�s not their fault if so many of the bits were unfunny. There were a couple of good cameos as well.

Don�t get me wrong; I laughed quite a few times, groaned many more and rolled my eyes the rest of the time. Much of the time I was just trying to figure out which movie was being spoofed at the time.

And I give the filmmakers credit for using a few 80s Brat Pack references as well, not to mention several tunes from my favorite music period, the 80s. This is a good thing, since if they had used any from the 90s teen movies, I would have absolutely no idea what the joke was.

The verdict:

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