Airplane! The Naked Gun. BASEketball. Scary Movie. What do these films all have in common? They are all comedy spoofs with some level of involvement (as producer, director, writer) from parody master David Zucker. What do they not share in common? Just exactly how funny we as the audience think they are. So along comes Sci-Fi Movie, another in a long line of goofball spoofs ready to attack your comedic senses (or knock you senseless). Zucker dons the Executive Producer cap here by bringing his lampooning talents to the sci-fi genre for The Weinstein Co. under their Dimension Films umbrella.
If you are looking at Sci-Fi’s title, thinking “not again!” you might be right. 1999’s Galaxy Quest was supposed to have somewhat covered this territory already and audiences reacted pretty well to it, too. It garnered a 7.2 IMDb rating and tallied $71 million in domestic box office, a clear money winner in the market at the time. So, are plot details really necessary here? Will Sci-Fi Movie even have a plot? Who cares? These films attempt to roast as many genre pics as humanly possible and hopefully generate some guttural belly laughs from the audience in the process. It’s a simple formula, even if the execution of these reels seems shaky at best far too often. These films are to their lambasted genres are like what Soulja Boy (easy target) is to hip-hop music. They essentially mock, tease, and disintegrate the art form of filmmaking into the lowest common denominator. And they do it all in the hopes that you will laugh your ass off!
Zucker’s track record with spoofs is so long, you could probably parody him as a genre. His credit list goes back as early as writing for 1977’s The Kentucky Fried Movie, which grossed more than 20 times its budget and essentially launched his career. The Wayans Brothers tapped Zucker to helm parts 3 and 4 of the highly successful Scary Movie franchise and those films laughed their way to more than $200 million in domestic box office, more than double what they cost to make. This is undeniable proof that spoofs can do big business. That should tell you what we are in for here. The Weinsteins are hoping he can do the same thing for Sci-Fi Movie.
On the positive side, Zucker is responsible for 1980’s classic spoof “Airplane!” (7.8 IMDb) which is widely recognized as the king of all spoof films. Since then, it seems his parodies have steadily declined in their appeal. He most recently produced Superhero Movie, which leveled an outstanding 3.9 on the IMDb Richter scale and a stellar 14% at RottenTomatoes. It failed to rescue its production budget in domestic receipts, too. That’s more disturbing than an earthquake. Paris Hilton’s reviled “film” (and I use the term loosely, just like Paris) “The Hottie and the Nottie” is not far below that number in popularity, so you get a sense of how shallow the water that we are treading here is. Still, these films are not made for critics but rather for the masses and to paraphrase Jay-Z, “dumb down for the audience, double your dollars, they criticize for it but they all yell, Holla!” Hence, people keep buying tickets to see these spoofs and they keep getting made. Expect Sci-Fi keep the trend going long into the future. (Brandon Scott/BOP)
Vital statistics for Sci-Fi Movie |
| Distributor |
Dimension Films |
|
Talent in red has entry in The Big Picture |
|
