"NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE": Those Bitches Represent! (reviewed by AX)

Toilets spraying diarrhea all over kids in a classroom...a cheerleader with tourette's syndrome enciting a crowd at a football game to scream out obscenities in unison...a teenage girl instructing an elderly woman on how to eat pussy...the list goes on. "Not Another Teen Movie" is a champ, it's not only one of the best "gross-out comedies" ever, but it's a dead-on (not to mention extremely welcome) send-up of movies aimed at teen audiences. I fucking loved it. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I like "toilet humor". And if you enjoy lots of doo-doo and titties, you will love this film.

So the basic plot of "Teen Movie" parodies the hit teen romance "She's All That": it's the story of a popular jock who bets his friends that he can turn a geeky girl into prom queen. But along the way, none of the recent "teen" movies are safe. Among the films that they take shots at are "American Pie", "Varsity Blues", "Cruel Intentions", "Can't Hardly Wait", "Bring It On", "Never Been Kissed", and "10 Things I Hate About You". And I was pleased to not only see them skewer older genre classics such as "Pretty In Pink", "The Breakfast Club" and "Lucas", but that good ol' Molly Ringwald and Mister T join in the fun.

Now for the real dirt. The previews would lead you to believe that the Wayans brothers (the guys behind the "Scary Movie" franchise) made "Not Another Teen Movie". After all, the jokes are similar to those in their films. However, their names do not appear anywhere in this production. The director is a guy named Joel Gallen, who is a former head of programming at MTV. I actually found "Teen Movie" to be consistently funnier than "Scary Movie 2", so in a way, it doesn't matter. Good comedy is good comedy. So how gross do things get? In addition to the spewing feces I mentioned earlier, there are plenty of other body fluids lurking around. Plus, you're treated to a few other nice sights: a bananna sticking out of a guy's ass, a football player who is ripped in half (guts all over the field!), and a giant vibrator flying into a birthday cake being held by grandma & grandpa. You gotta love that stuff. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the brilliant parody of Shannon Elisabeth's "American Pie" foreign exchnge student character. She walks around school completely naked for the whole movie. Hilarious shit indeed.

But the real treat of "Teen Movie", for me at least, was the dialogue. No matter how visually disgusting the jokes can get, the writers know that shit gets old after a while if you don't have some good dialogue in there. And that is where this film really shines. The character who's supposed to mirror Sarah Michelle Gellar's ice queen in "Cruel Intentions" not only is a dead ringer for the actress, but says things like: "How come when I tell boys they can put it anywhere they want, they always stick it in my ass?"

So, this holiday season, why not treat the family to a few hundred dick jokes. Who's it gonna hurt?

(12.12.01)