653. Not Another Teen Movie (2001)

Starring: Chris Evans, Chyler Leigh, Jaime Pressly

Director: Joel Gallen

Running Time: 89 mins

Not Another Teen Movie is an American film about a popular jock who takes up a bet to turn a rebellious girl into the prom queen of the high school year, while other hijinks parody all the teenage movies of the 80s and 90s.

In a world after Scary Movie was released, I’m sure there were hundreds of different spoof films flying around Hollywood. To be honest, you need to see one to see them all, and with this film really lacking in originality, it’s not that impressive to see what is effectively a rip-off of a rip-off.

However, I do have to say that this film does do exactly what it says on the tin. It’s an hour and a half of mindless juvenile nonsense, but it did make me laugh quite often, and while it’s still not great to see a film that is so plainly idiotic and repetitive, it works as a bit of mindless rubbish.

You can take that description as you like, but I’m still not a fan of this parody/spoof genre, and I’ll not be too keen to watch any others in the near future. While this film can be relatively entertaining at the best of moments, it’s easy to see that it really falls down at any points where it’s not jam-packed with genuinely funny jokes.

That’s another thing that I’ve got to say, while I was surprised that it did make me laugh as much as it did, I would say that only about 15% of the jokes are genuinely funny. So, yes, you do get the opportunity to laugh quite a bit, but I guarantee that you will spend most of the time bored at the endless sea of terribly unfunny jokes and gags being thrust at you every second.

One thing that I am hugely impressed by, however, is how many big stars they managed to get into this film to make it a little more fun. Mr. T was the cherry on top of the cake, but people like Molly Ringwald from The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink and Paul Gleason, also from The Breakfast Club, were quite a cool addition to the whole thing.

Overall, then, I’ll give this a 5.9, because while it was at points entertaining, I’ve got to admit that its unoriginal nature and very poor hit:miss ratio did disappoint me a lot.