Hollywood Reporter recently wrote an article questioning if the spoof genre is losing profitability. It’s not a steep decline like M. Night Shyamalan’s reputation, but it is a decline nonetheless.
Mel Brooks’ films had story-arcs with characters spoofing other movies. The comedy was well-written. There were references to other movies; poking fun at them, but done in a way that it’s funny to viewers regardless if it’s understood or not. And the actors had great comedic timing. There was a defined story.
One of the problems is that spoof movies nowadays ignore a coherent storyline. For the past few years spoofs have relied heavily on outrageous, visual humor. The actors ham it up to the point of ridiculousness with a try-too-hard approach to get a laugh. There’s spoof-cameos of entertainers that ultimately do not add anything to the films. An actual plot with creative spoofs are replaced with, “Remember this character?” moments — or even spoofing other comedies.
That’s the downfall for spoofs now; there’s hardly any creativity. Now, spoofs are merely throwing in actors who resemble others and doing something out of the ordinary for that particular character — and by doing something out of the ordinary, I mean something utterly ridiculous that doesn’t serve the story. At all. And each of these movies ultimately become dated and forgotten, while spoofs like Mel Brooks’ are still funny and are looked upon as classics.
