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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.
Why must we be exposed to another piece of teen movie garbage? Granted, it's a spoof, but it has the trademark "lack of intelligence" that every teen movie has...
Although I have not been to the movie yet, I could have written that review just by watching a 30 second spot on television!!!
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. RUSH
Allright, I'll accept that, but Jon, is it worth paying almost eight dollars to see? I think i'll pass..
Berto
The only reason this movie exists is because the Wayans brothers didn't get to it first. The real question is, is that because the Wayans brothers knew that it would be stupid?
TAB HUNTER? You mean to tell me that they so quickly ran out of satirical fodder that they had to go back....checks imdb...40 years (The Tab Hunter Show) for material? Do they really think that their audience, a bunch of 13yr olds who found pastry masturbation hysterical, are going to get such references? Most of the kids that will be going to see this probably get "She's All That" but never even saw "Pretty in Pink".
Oy. Look for Katz to next reveal that "A Beautiful Mind" sucks because there's no nudity.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
The problem is that spoofing "teen movies" is shooting fish in a barrel.
No, I take that back, it's even less challenging than shooting fish in a barrel. The inanity behind "teen movies" is so self-evident, that claiming to spoof them is redundant. It's like trying to spoof Roger Corman movies - unnecessary, and not particularly clever.
I will admit, normally I don't mind Katz articles, but the movie reviews are just off the wall. I read the reviewers whom I usually trust, and invariably what they call boring, derivative, and recycled drek will apparently get raves from Mr. Katz. I guess that's the beauty of opinion being, well, opinion and all, but still....is there ANY lowest-common-denominator entertainment he doesn't lap up and ask for seconds?
Maybe the specific "jokes" in Not Another Teen Movie are worth a chuckle, but the satirizing the "teen movie" genre is like aiming at the kid in the wheelchair in dodgeball....there's just no sport in it whatsoever. And to read a gushing review like it's some genius stroke of parodic insight...stick to sermonizing about the youth-empowering effects of the net, Katz!
What in the world does this have to do about News for Nerds?
/. refused to carry articles about things like this, I would be quite saddened. We aren't all a bunch of shut-ins who can't appreciate a good laugh every once in a while...
Since when can't nerds be interested in movies?!
Just because this is a site for geeks doesn't mean every article has to be about BIOS revisions, Kernel patches, and medical science breakthroughs. Yes, that makes up the bulk of what we want to see here, and it is the bulk of what we DO see here, but geeks do have interests outside of those fields.
Frankly, if
90% of these comments is just whining... If you don't like the article, don't read it, and don't post trash comments. Try to keep the comments on topic...
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
What in the world is wrong with you that you have to say such things just because you dislike Katz?
I would normally let this go, as it's off-topic, but your aggregious slander of Mr. Katz has prompted my reply.
I had skipped the Afghanistan article, as I do most of his articles, but have just read it because of your post.
It is entirely plausable that a man has dug up an Amiga, plugged it in, and has connected to the Net. It's not rocket science. Having lived in and travelled around Eastern Europe, I've seen and used some pretty low tech solutions to surf the net.
You can get a modem to connect at 9600 baud across lines that you wouldn't think could support a telephone conversation, and computers you wouldn't think could run a browser. (The web is still very usable over a 9600 baud connection, especially with images off as older browsers allow)
And answering how an Afghani would have this knowledge and ability, you ignore reality:
1. Five years ago you could still have a computer in Afghanistan
2. It's a country with many smart people, educated there and abroad
3. People with chicken coops aren't necessarily poor peasants
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.
Before you slander Katz you should get out of college and in to the rest of the world. See what goes on and how people adapt to not being in an environment so sheltered as yours. At 21 you may think you know everything, but in time you'll find you most certainly don't.
We may not like or appreciate Katz, but he is one of the few legitimage journalists (in Print and on the web) with an extensive knowledge of technology and it's impacts on the world. Don't call him a liar if you don't have some serious proof.
Ummm, this is slashdot.
Since when can't nerds be interested in movies?!
I think a lot of nerds are interested in movies. Personally, I'm very interested in making sure that the MPAA doesn't get any of my money for making them, because they helped fund the DMCA to strip me of my First Amendment rights.
But while we're talking about seeing movies for free in one manner or another, I think the point was that this particular movie probably doesn't fit our audience very well. It's a spoof of a special-interest genre (movies for teens 17 and under), and doesn't have the broad-based appeal to a general audience that nearly anything else would.
In short, there's no problem with reviewing general-interest movies on a special-interest site. But there's a big problem with reviewing special-interest movies for high school kids on a site for professional and amateur programmers.
What a joke. The only good thing about this movie is that it will teach those "popular kid" idiots like the atheletes at Columbine that their movies just aren't funny.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
The whole point of the movie is to make fun of pop culture. I think that qualifies it as "News for Nerds".
As for "Stuff that Matters", if you don't think movies matter, it's really quite simple to go into your preferences and turn off the "movies" category.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Alright people, understand the following disclaimers:
1. I am a student and my major is film, and as such I think I know everything.
2. I actually like some teen movies for what they are-- "Election," most notably, but I didn't think "The Faculty" was that bad, either.
3. I have no problem with Jon Katz, prior to this review.
Here we go then.
I saw this movie last night, as the concept amused me and a friend offered to pay. I regret it immensely.
My tastes are not what I'd call extraordinarily sophisticated; I can be amused by dumb comedy, so long as it's *smart* dumb comedy, if you catch my drift. "Scary Movie" got a few laughs out of me.
"Not Another Teen Movie" did not.
Every bit of humor is obvious and cliched. There is no wit whatsoever to this-- it seems that the makers of the movie are responsible for this heap not because they would want to pander to and work at the level of 12-year-olds, but because that's the best they can do.
It's not enough to say that an adolescent boy could have written this thing. It's more like an adolescent boy could have written it the night before it was due.
Katz gets one thing right: plot is almost non-existant. Unfortunately, without plot, we would need some other cohesive element to this the movie together-- characters, say. But there's so many characters crammed in here, haphazardly and without rhyme or reason, that the whole thing becomes difficult to follow. I've seen just about everything the movies spoofs, so I recognized the "archetypes" of the characters, but each was so bland and unfunny (although I'll admit the token black guy was vaguely amusing at one point) as to completely blend into the next.
I was worried going in that I would have seen all the jokes already in the previews. This was a mistake. I should have wanted to see more of the jokes in the previews, so that I would have known enough to save myself the 82 minutes it took to suffer through this abomination.
Save yourself from it, boys and girls. Go see "Vanilla Sky" instead. It may mess with your head, but at least you'll be thinking about something other than the eight bucks you just lost on your way out of the theater.
I assumed he actually meant "self-referential". As in, the movie makes fun of itself.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Oh come on, we all know that 90% of slashdot readers are 14 year old Hax0rs
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
JonKatz wrote: "[...] the movie takes this oddly American cinematic genre [...]"
It might be true that nowadays teen movies are primarily made (and viewed) in the USA, but Israel and Germany had their jointly produced Eis am Stiel ("Lemon Popsicle" in the US) series from 1979 to 1988 starring Zachi Noy among others. They weren't afraid to show full frontal nudity - they probably had to, the movies being so bad that otherwise they would have all flopped. The US movie Porky's seems to have been inspired by these flicks.
The series portrays teens as stupid drooling sex addicts whose primary motivation is invariably getting laid. There are still a couple of teen movies made in Germany from time to time, but since the Germans like (and partially understand) US lifestyle they also import all of the US teen movies.
This goes to show that the US aren't the only nation capable of making silly teen movies.
Some info about Eis am Stiel (German)
A Lemon Popsicle fanpage
The Washington Post panned this movie. One of their critics (Kempley) said "Save your time, save your money, save your soul. Stay at home." Now, I have a dilemma. Should I trust Kempley or Katz?
Added for relevance: I like the spoof of spoof of ... NaNTM. It's great to see an industry that can satrize itself. For money. Anyone that thinks they did this without an eye for the boxoffice profits is kidding themselves. They know that there's a community out there that will go to this kind of movie just to agree with the spoof. And pay the ticket price anyway.
It's Just Hollywood.
yea, right.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
...who doesn't take T seriously !
Someone is wrong on the Internet!
So it refers to itself all the time? I think he just means referential.
If you were in the habit of reading movie reviews, instead of just browsing through this one because it happened to be on Slashdot, you would know that the term "self-referential" means that it depends on gags that refer to the genre itself, not the movie itself. For an example I refer you to The Onion's movie reviews, where you will find that pretty much every cartoon movie's review uses the term (at least Shrek and Monsters, Inc.). Granted, the term is confusing, but so are terms like "functional computer language" or "operating system kernel" if you don't already know what the writer is talking about. Maybe instead of automatically assuming that you're smarter than the writer, you should start by assuming that you're the ignorant one, because in this case it's true.
(...and the great thing is, I know it's stupid...)
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
$9.75 for a normal movie in Victoria BC. Closer to $14 if you go to Silver City (the biiig screens). Better pick your movie carefully.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Is he a seasoned expert on politics, law, and cinema?
I think most everyone can agree that Katz is none of these things. His political and legal diatribes are one note symphonies of self-aggrandizement and faux-righteous indignation, espousing the values and attitudes of a culture which he has been trying desperately for the past few years to not only be a part of, but also to be the poet laureate for. In these respects he acts the part of the colonials coming to the new world, assigning roles, rules, and boundries that were previously non-existent, nor ontologically inferable, but constitute the only way in which he can fathom the world functioning. So he imposes this artificial order on things, which the natives (slashdotters) see right through, but which the Old World (Wired, Salon, etc), who deal with the new in the same terms as him, views as extremely novel and insightful.
The same can be said for his movie reviews. His lack of understanding of and expertise in the field shows through in the form they all take: plot summaries decorated with occasional tips-of-the-hat to quality or cultural implications. Many people have said of this particular review that they learned nothing that they couldn't have inferred from the trailer, a sentiment with which I empathize. But beyond the shoddy craftsmanship and poorly-suited-to-this-forum topic, there is the fact that he gets close, at points, to actually saying something, as opposed to regurgitating parts of the press kit. He says that "the movie makes some real points about contemporary American teen life." Reading the review over, the only nearly salient point on this topic is "that white suburban kids want everybody else's culture." Thank you Jon, but this suggestion is neither specific to this movie, new, nor, from what I can tell, especially well explored in this bit of cinematic dross.
Please: do not speak for a community that you don't belong to, that doesn't want you, and that you quite obviously don't understand. And when reviewing movies, try to offer your readers something beyond what they could get from the two sentence blurbs that appear in monolithic film guides. Or, if this is all the content you intend to offer, cut to the chase and author one sentence reviews that have the same effect of your current opining rambles: either "I liked it" or "I didn't like it."
strange things are afoot at the Circle K...
I thought /. sent Katz on assignment to Afghanistan as their field correspondent.
I even remember reading melodramatic overly wordy reports from the front from his Tales from the AfghaniHellmouth series.
Was it all just a dream?
Really?
Reality can be so cruel!
-Rothfuss
Definitely Kemply.
Best Slashdot Co
that wasn't funny...
How precisely do you suggest we go about achieving this feat?
Help fight continental drift.
It's a spoof of a special-interest genre (movies for teens 17 and under)....
Oddly enough, isn't it rated R? As in restricted under 17? So their target audience is 17 year olds, or people under 17 whos parents would actually go to see this with them...
Or are they encouraging people to sneak in and/or theaters not to card people?
I don't agree with the ratings system here, but i mean, if its there, use it, ya know?
sig?
What the hell is a fucking teen movie review doing on fucking slashdot?! If no one else has noticed this is normally a slightly TECHNICAL site. Get the shit off of /.'s front page. Thanks, and you moderators can go to hell considering your motto is, and I quote, "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." I thought that slashdot was the 'root' of all tech news. Now it's anything they can put on the damn front page to attract attention.
http://www.firstcallpaintball.com/
JonKatz's review is "Offtopic." However, let me bring this article into Slashdot's realm of coverage by pointing out an issue related to Your Rights:
If you have a DVR or can otherwise record the TV teaser for this movie in a high-quality way, check out the scene where the woman in a dress falls through the stairs.
Just after they switch to a shot looking down on her (or more likely, her stunt-double) falling into the abyss, there are about 6 frames where her dress most obviously should hike up to the point of heavy undergarment exposure. However it is quite obvious that someone whipped out the Paintbrush tool and did a ridiculously fake-looking, blurry censorship job.
This was only a guess until I dropped my TiVo remote and punched up www.apple.com. I visited their generous selection of trailers and viewed the same footage through the wonders of Broadband. Frame-by-framing with the Quicktime viewer, I located the same set of frames and confirmed that, in fact, the online version displays a great deal of unadulterated Good Old White Cotton American Freedom.
This posting is not intended as an exercise in lechery but instead as an anchor, attaching in some small way this obviously matter-free, nerd-unrelated article to the Slashdot favorite topic, Censorship.
JonKatz should thank me. No personal checks, plesae.
"Why would God give us a waist if we wasn't supposed to rest our pants on it?" - Rev. Roy McDaniels
[T]hey helped fund the DMCA to strip me of my First Amendment rights.
Of exactly which First Amendment right have you been deprived by the DMCA? The right of the people to peaceably assemble? Has your personal freedom of speech been abridged? Ooh, I got it! You've found an otherwise overlooked passage in the law that prohibits you from petitioning the government for a redress of grievances!
Idiot. Have you even read the DMCA? Argue about it all you want, but make sure you're at least informed first.
Granted, the movie was about twice as long as it should have been, and simply ran out of things to make fun of. And, yes, they beat the dead horse that became Cruel Intentions into anthrax-worthy particles of meatjuice.
That being said, I have to respect movies that have some decently obscure and enjoyable subtexts. For example:
1) The Title. Not Another Teen Movie. The joke is, it *is* another teen movie...so, "Not ANOTHER Teen Movie!?!", instead of "NOT Another Teen Movie." Possibly unintentional, but given the ending(worth gritting through, just to hear the last words from the last speaker) I doubt it.
*SPOILER ALERT*
2) Amanda. So they mocked the bejesus out of Jennifer Love Hewitt's role in Can't Hardly Wait. Sure, fish in a barrel. But giving Lacey Chabert, who costarred with her on Party of Five and probably had to choke on Hewitt's silicone-enhanced shadow for years on end, the opportunity to lay waste to her former colleague...heh. Impressive.
Incidentally, am I the only one who is tired of "I used to like Katz, but now, with this horrific review of such-and-such, I have to change my mind"? STFU. Quit cloning Indy Rock Pete; Katz at least can choose to like or dislike whatever the hell he feels without consulting IMDB to make sure that he's rating Remember the Goddamn Titans higher than a silly hyperreferential uber-spoof of a flick.
And that's more than I can say about at least one of you. :-)
--Dan
There was one other pretty decent set of metajokes in there -- note the reference to asians:
1) The only asian "character" was a white guy.
2) The asian male actors didn't speak but did know kung fu.
3) The asian female actresses were bitchy but subordinate(indeed, could only speak in unison) behind the white head cheerleader.
Mind you, I'm just some white guy. But I have noticed there aren't actually, um, any asian male stars in Hollywood. Like, at all.
Unless they fight.
By contrast, there *has* to be a Token Black Guy, and he *has* to be obvious. Bonus points if he's got an African name.
For a crude movie, this was some elegant subtlety.
--Dan
Not that I particularly have a problem with smoking, but the combination of:
:-)
1) Doing a drug that gives more misery when you're off of it than it does pleasure when you're on it,
2) Thinking of money in terms of how much of that drug it buys you,
and
3) Mocking someone else for being a dumbass
...is a hell of a combination
--Dan
isn't it rated R? As in restricted under 17? So their target audience is 17 year olds, or people under 17 whos parents would actually go to see this with them...
/. backs it up with "it is RAUNCHY". Was 20-something so long ago for me that I don't remember what constituted "funny"??
I was wondering about that myself. Can you imagine taking your parents to see this thing? It sounds like they'd faint! The rating reads "R for strong sexual content" and then
Intelligent Life on Earth
I can't believe I forgot to mention this. Even with Hollywood's obsession with Asian guys as fighters, they still managed to cast a f*cking white guy for the next big hyperreferential spoof movie of the year, Kung Pow.
Granted, they found Dave Barry's evil twin, and the movie looks utterly hilarious(meaning l33t hax0r wannabe Katzbashers will set their flamethrowers on 'troll flambe con carne' come January 18th), but for f*ck's sake is the concept of some actor kicking ass *and* making people laugh so disturbingly alien that the casting director couldn't imagine an Asian guy doing both at the same time?
WTF: Carrot Top is an international star while Margaret Cho gets her ass booted off the air in her first season for doing that *truly* American McArt form, "People are f*cking retarded, that's the situation." Oh well. She's free to mock whatever she likes in clubs around the country now, while Carrot Top whores himself out to 1-800-Collect(the place where stars nicely say 'I can no longer afford to pay ten cents a minute, but if this doesn't pan out, I'll be earning $2.99 a minute').
I suppose there's some justice in the world after all.
--Dan, who is flashing back to "There is no justice, there is just us."
I love Jon Katz!!!
He is roll model for m3
I have seen this trailer but not full DiVX
You send to me Mr. Jon Katz?
Many computers arrive in Humanitarian Aid Package
Microsoft XP is good!!!!! No more BSOD! I still using C64 - but for musical program, my bazouki was smashed, so now I program Midi!!
I like this Trance Style music - boom boom boom - like bombs!
Internet is Great!!! junis
When in fact, it simply takes the same old tired "plot" (and I use the term quite loosely) devices and takes their obviousness above and beyond what is normally done? It sounds to me like the same writers who write the kind of dreck the movie is trying to spoof just turned around and made it even more obvious, banal, and raunchy. So all they're really doing is taking the same content to a new level. It's hardly "achey breaky song" type spoofing, that's for sure.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
It's not necessary for him to read it [the DMCA]. All he needs is to just look at how it's being applied. Ever hear of Felten?
The Felten case, of course, has nothing to do with the First Amendment.
One: the DMCA does not, and never has, applied to the Felten case, because SDMI granted their explicit permission to study the technologies in question. The DMCA would have only been applicable if the work had been done without the SDMI's permission.
Two: had the DMCA applied to the Felten case, it still would not have been a First Amendment issue. The courts have ruled over and over that "free speech" does not literally mean being able to say what you want. Some kinds of public speech are criminal: libel, slander, the disclosure of classified information, trademark and copyright violations, truth in advertising, and so on. Generally speaking, the courts have held that the free expression of opinions is inviolate, while the communication of facts (or alleged facts) can be restricted in specific circumstances.
In other words, the DMCA may be unconstitutional (I express no opinion), but not due to violation of the First Amendment. It's more of an enumerated powers/Title 17 issue.
I stand by my cry of "idiot."
Oh, excuse me, my concern with the ethics and proper practices of
Fine moderating, douchebag.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Your argument is far more confusing than mine.
I say (clearly I thought) that NATM is not very good and that if you want to see movies that are "good" spoofs of the Teen Genre then look at Clueless and Bring It On.
What the Hell are you talking about?
As for your assessment about a difference beteen a movie that is a spoof and a movie that doesn't take itself too seriously; it is _you_ who are wrong. This movie, NATM, set out to be a spoof. They thought they were making a spoof when they concieved, pitched, shot and distributed the movie. They were serious about it. They were also about two miles short of the mark.
John Katz said it was a good spoof. He's wrong. By next weekend we'll all know I'm right.
But thank you and, please, come again.
This
You know the movie really sucked but the way you tell it it DOES sound pretty good.
This