Bad Ideas: Spoofing Dance Movies
I thought the first Scary Movie was a smart spoof of the most modern horror genre. But the reinvention of the spoof genre has brought me so much pain and embarrassment. Epic Movie, Not Another Teen Movie, Date Movie, the many Scary Movie sequels – Why do people watch this crap? Whatever reason, it just doesn't matter, because the people keep buying those tickets. And now The Weinstein Company has announced that they have greenlit a spoof of the dance movie genre. Digging a little deep are we?
Dirty Step Stomp, a spec script by Steve Basilone and Annie Mebane, spoofs recent dance flicks such as Stomp the Yard, Step Up and Save the Last Dance in addition to the classic 1980's films Footloose and Dirty Dancing. But is there really enough quality movies to make fun of? It probably doesn't matter anyway. What did Paris Hilton or Borat have to do with epic movies? They'll throw together a movie with a bunch of loose recent pop culture references and people will rush to the theaters.
But despite my anger at the genre, I'm about to give away the next million dollar idea: Spoof the sports movie genre. I don't believe any movie has done it yet (at least successfully). I remember this promo spot that AMC theaters use to run before the movies. It appeared to be a trailer for a movie about a male cheerleader. I thought that the short one minute promo was so funny. It shows how good a sports spoof could be, if made right (not to say they would make it right. Again, they would probably put the Waynes brothers in charge and load it up on the recent pop culture jokes, filling it with so many movie references that it becomes a muddled mess). But please, steal my idea. Because it's better than a spoof about dance movies.
And while I'm at it: Team American: World Police was an incredibly smart spoof on the action movie genre. Trey Parker and Matt Stone did a better spoof of the epic genre than 20th Century Fox shit out, and with puppets no less.