Review: Not Another Teen Movie

Not Another Teen Movie is a delicious bit of film criticism, hilarious, outrageous and on target. And REALLY raunchy. No genre ever needed a drubbing more than the teen movie, and it gets one here. A dizzying spoof of a parody of a satire, the movie takes this oddly American cinematic genre and rakes it vulgarly and happily and over the coals. There's the token black kid, the rebelliously individualistic girl who's enmeshed with the most popular guy who would like to be less banal and shallow than he is (and who is enmeshed with the cruelest girl in school), the geeks and the nerds, the horny pubescents, and the ever-pathetic best friend of rebellious girl, who wants the rebelliously individualistic girl (who morphs of course into a ravishing beauty) but hasn't got a chance. The movie makes some real points about contemporary American teen life. Spoilage Declaration: Don't worry, there is no plot.

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.