Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

★★★
Not Another Teen Movie is a total riot. It's vulgar, crass, smutty and thoroughly unrefined, but darn it all it's hilarious too often to dislike. Much like his lead character's gift for sloppily applying paint to a canvas and creating a simplistic yet comprehensible picture, director Joel Gallen hastily fills his frame with gags that run the gamut from tasteless to bizarre, yet it all comes together to form a coherent story that smuggles in every familiar teen archetype from over a dozen movies while stitching together the plots of She's All That and Varsity Blues. The result resembles a quilt of oddly mismatched colors and patterns that at least functions in its primary purpose of providing warmth. I suppose we can thank Keenan Ivory Wayans's Scary Movie for setting the stage for this kind of oversexualized parody.

Like every parody that came before it, Not Another Teen Movie grabs scenes and characters from well-known movies and adds a comic spin to them. By 2001, the teen movie market was saturated. John Hughes's angst-filled '80s comedy/dramas were a response to the Horny Teenager offerings from the first part of the decade (Porky's and the like). The '90s brought a resurgence in the genre's popularity with a stream of teen movies based on classical works (Clueless was based on Jane Austen's Emma). Many of Joel Gallen's characters made one-off appearances, but others like the Pretty Ugly Girl (She's All That, Sixteen Candles) became recurring themes. I remember watching Saved by the Bell: The New Class on Saturday mornings, and every season had a Token Black Guy.

Janey Briggs (Chyler Leigh) is the Laney Boggs import who becomes the unwitting pawn in a bet between Popular Jock Jake Wyler (Chris Evans) and Cocky Blond Austin (Eric Christian Olsen). Jake's job is to turn her into the prom queen, but on the side, he must deal with his demotion on the football team thanks to an unfortunate mishap involving a smaller player who was based on Lucas. His sister Catherine (Mia Kirshner) was ported over from Cruel Intensions by serving as the evil sexpot, but she serves double duty as the makeover specialist originated by Anna Paquin from She's All That. A description of this cast would be cumbersome to communicate. If I printed out pictures of the cast and connected them to their inspirations and put them on display, the collage would look like John Nash's corkboard from A Beautiful Mind. Part of the fun is to spot the references, but watching a movie shouldn't be like playing Trivial Pursuit. Thankfully, there is another draw: The jokes are hilarious and often explosive, as Lacey Chabert's Perfect Girl demonstrates. What a good sport she was.

Jake is at first flabbergasted to receive Janey as his assignment, but he warms up to her soon enough. He starts to find success, which Austin sabotages just like his Dean Sampson, Jr. counterpart did in his own movie. While all of this is happening, we get a deluge of one-liners and gags from other movies. I especially liked how the library from The Breakfast Club was faithfully recreated. Jaime Pressly stars as a mean cheerleader who shows up the East Compton Wildcats with a routine that must be seen to be believed. Mia Kirshner's presence here surprised me. She had never done anything like this before. She was known for her Canadian indie movies like Exotica. She plays Jake's sultry and incestuous sister Catherine, who has a voracious appetite for obscene encounters. This script seems beneath her, but then again she looks like she had fun doing it, so I'm not complaining.

Even though the movie reaches far and wide to get a laugh, it stays focused on its primary narrative, which culminates at the prom, where everyone is a dance expert. Cameos abound. My favorite involved Mr. T, whose dialogue reminded me of Eddie Murphy's jokes about him in Delirious. Not Another Teen Movie isn't mean-spirited. It has a lot of fun with the movies that inspired it while mining for gags in unexpected places. Not every joke works, though. American Beauty gets a few nods, but it's in the wrong genre and the boy with the camcorder doesn't add any humor to the story. He's just there for recognition. Ed Lauter plays a hotheaded coach who shouts the Lord's name in vain multiple times. He's here to parody Jon Voigt's role in Varsity Blues, but there's no payoff to his presence since neither he nor his words are funny.

Not Another Teen Movie isn't as uneven as its premise would suggest. It's easy to watch a bunch of movies and steal their scenes, and it's even easier to screw it up. Just look at Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg's output…or don't. Luckily, Joel Gallen and his five writers possess a sense of humor and significantly more skill. They know for the most part when to stop a joke before it outstays its welcome. The cast, all game enough to be viewed unflatteringly at times, is terrific. Chyler Leigh is cute as the unpopular Janey Briggs. Her first scene demonstrates her ability to make the right face for the right occasion. Chris Evans in an early role as the spikey-haired Jake Wyler defies his image to come in the M.C.U. Supporting players figure into the plot heavily while others—like the foreign exchange student—are on the periphery. They float in to participate in a gag and then float out again. The momentum rarely stops, and even when the movie stumbles, it just gets right up again and keeps going. That's a good attitude to have.

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