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Review: Not Another Teen Movie
From the opening shots, you know you're going to have fun, as the movie is set in the "John Hughes High School." Unable to win acceptance mimicking African-American culture, one JHHS student decides it's now hipper to be a Jackie Chan clone and dresses and talks "Asian." One of the interesting subtexts of all teen movies is that white suburban kids want everybody else's culture, since they don't seem to have one of their own. A cheerleader with Tourette's Syndrome tries out for the squad and wins a spot.
Like all the best teen movies, this one is obsessively self-referential. Even if you've seen all of these movies, from She's All That to Karate Kid to Not Another Scary Movie to Scream to Pretty In Pink to Clueless, you still may miss half of the insider jokes and references, which whiz by in a steady, sometimes hilarious stream. Spoofs of spoofs of spoofs can work. The movie skewers almost every teen star, from Tab Hunter to Freddie Prinze Jr., even offering a cameo role to Molly Ringwald, the teen star of the Reagan era.
Not Another Teen Movie even takes shots at movies outside of the teen genre, like American Beauty (represented by a weirdo in a funny hat with a camcorder followed around by a hovering plastic bag labelled "the most beautiful thing in the world.") But American Pie comes in for the wittiest and most relentless drubbing, with Randy Quaid as the drunken Mr. Briggs who stuffs his kitchen with apple pies when he isn't hallucinating about the Vietnam War. There's also a foreign exchange student named Areola, who shows up for school wearing nothing but a backpack, pointing out that her only purpose in coming to America is to titillate brainless and horny American schoolkids. In terms of raunchiness and scatalogical humor, the movie goes farther than American Pie, pausing along the way for good measure to take on the recent spate of stupid feel-good sports movies like Remember the Titans. There are also some pointed pokes at the way the teen movies manipulate race in the shallowest of ways. "Mr. T" makes an appearance as the befuddled but wise black school janitor dispensing incomprehensible but mystical advice.
It would be pointless to try and suggest or describe anything like a plot, which the movie enthusiastically avoids. Suffice it to say there is a prom coming up, and there is a wager about whether the school's most ungainly girl can be turned into a prom queen by the venal and manipulative jocks, one of whom falls instantly in love with her. The bulk of the teen movies revolve around the same two or three points: shallow cheerleaders, dumb but noble-hearted jocks, obnoxious nerds and geeks, and faux individualists who claim they are different, but who always seem to always end up dating the best-looking kids in school and hanging out with the most popular cliques. It's a big fat target, and Not Another Teen Movie scores with surprising wit and skill. It's all in the writing.
This article has one major flaw: Do not put quotes around Mr. T's name! Thank you.
Also, first post.
No genre ever needed a drubbing more than the teen movie, and it gets what it deserves here.
This may be true, but personally I can think of a genre i'd like to do some drubbing to. I'm desperately searching for some relevance here, and I'm failing. News for Nerds... no. Stuff that Matters.... AahaHAHA.
Story: -1 OffTopic.
If this post was a Troll, it would be untrue.
If this post was Flamebait, I'd expect you to disagree.
If this post was OffTopic, I wouldn't have replied to Jon directly.
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What happens when you outlaw guns
Join the chorus of reasonable voices DEMANDING that Katz come clean!
Jon, your continuing silence on this matter is an indictment of your total failure as a responsible journalist and further diminishes your already suspect credibility. Admit your mistake or get your sorry butt off this forum. If Notre Dame can fire their new coach for lying on his resume, you should be treated likewise for your shameless and unapologetic representation of fiction as fact.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
I'm assuming your reply is not a deliberate troll, purely because of your low userid, not your comments. Perhaps this is foolish of me.
All I can say is read the Message from Kabul (see link in parent), and the comments, and try telling me that his article is genuine. I won't discount the possibility that JK was duped, but the fact of his continued silence and refusal to respond weighs in heavily against him.
1. Five years ago you could still have a computer in Afghanistan
Sure. Not a powerful enough one to play DIVX's on. Just think - One DIVX over 9.6kbps modem = one week and a day at maximum transfer rate. Then he's going to play it on his 486?
2. It's a country with many smart people, educated there and abroad
I never intimated that this wasn't the case.
3. People with chicken coops aren't necessarily poor peasants
Ibid.
4. Borders are porous and different people have different reasons for living in a particular place; this guy may well have lived half his life in New York for all you know.
I recommend you read the article again.
"Junis"' attitude, as imparted to JonKatz, implies heavy Ameri-centrism, (Baywatch, Microsoft, Independence Day, porn, etc) almost as if it were written by an American with little knowedge of any genuine Asian mindset or culture. Don't humiliate yourself further by professing complete belief in what is obviously, at best, a very stupid journalist being laughed at by some hoaxer.
Nope. He said his Commodore - and the Amiga can play DivXs. plus, if he was out of the loop all this time, he may be looking forward to downloading movies, but be unable to. Now he has the opportunity, not the capability.
"Junis"' attitude, as imparted to JonKatz, implies heavy Ameri-centrism, (Baywatch, Microsoft, Independence Day, porn, etc) almost as if it were written by an American with little knowedge of any genuine Asian mindset
You're right! Most Asians with an American are interested in Baywatch, Microsoft (to the point that there is a Korean business trend of dressing like Gates), and TITANIC, not Independance Day. (Of course, when it comes to porn, as Haruka Inui will tell you, American Porn is the best). When emailing an American, wouldn't it make sense that he'd show off his in depth knowledge of American culture?
And if either Americans or Asians feel insulted by that, Americans by and large think Japan = Asia, and everybody watches Sailor Moon and Godzilla. The reality is, of course, that different people have various levels of knowledge about each other's culture, but whatever happens to be played in your area becomes an example of "popular x culture", Thus Titanic and Godzilla making the crossover, while both mezuzahs and kadomatsus don't.
And yes, I am as ignorant as you about Afgani culture. Why don't you admit it? True, it is very plausable that he was duped - I see no reason for him to fabricate the story (that is a career killer for a journalist). But we shall see - certainly the kid could probably get another message out sooner or later.
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Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Kempley.
The truth about Michael
Heh, I went to high school with Chris Evans (he's one of the main characters... I haven't seen the movie, but he's the one they show in the previews wearing whipped cream on his nipples). He's as much of a dumbass in real life as he is in that movie, so for that reason alone, I always laugh at the previews :) I'll probably have to rent the movie at some point, but you're not gonna catch me spending (3 * $pack_of_cigarettes) on that piece of shit movie.
Aside from the issue of playing divx on a Commodore* computer that was buried under a chicken coop for an unspecified number of years, the fact is that Kabul was without electric power at the time this lad was supposed to be watching Baywatch. Yes, American pop culture pops up everywhere, but I doubt if Baywatch was popping up on Kabul TV. If Katz can prove otherwise, and that should be a trivial task, let him do so.
* Who ever uses the term "my Commodore" to refer to an Amiga?
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07