Wow, I swear that I actually am Jim Carrey from "The Truman Show." My friend and I actually had a conversation the other night about Meet the Spartans, and how we should make a movie that parodies the Freidberg-Seltzer films.

However, I don't think that you are right in saying all of their work is crap. Scary Movie and Date Movie actually had some artistic merit, in that they were true parodies of genres of film.

Genres move through four stages once they are recognized as a unique type of film. It starts with the “primitive,” or formative stage in which the genre's characteristics are first established. Then, the genre reaches the “classical stage,” which is the genre at its peak, with generic qualities refined. The genre then becomes “revisionist,” in that those participating in the genre scrutinize and reevaluate, the conventions that typify the genre. Finally, the genre reaches the “parodic stage,” in which the genre is satirized in a consciously self-reflexive, tongue-in-cheek manner.

You were right in that the Zucker Brothers had a better grasp on this concept in the 70's and 80's, because their films were always tongue-in-cheek attacks of REAL GENRES. One could watch one of their films and understand what they were saying about the genre.

I think that in Scary Movie and even Date Movie Freidberg-Seltzer did just that. They actually parodied real genres, and made statements about the art of filmmaking, without insulting the viewer's intelligence. The biggest problem that I see with Meet the Spartans is that it does not attack a genre … instead it attacks summer blockbuster films, regardless of genre, along with pop culture in general. That makes this film satire, which is something that the Zucker Brothers never really got the hang of. For proof of that point watch Scary Movie 3, which ironically is directed by David Zucker and is more of a satire than a parody (after Scary Movie 2, there wasn't anything left in scary movies to parody - so they decided to bring in a Zucker Brother and make fun of Airplane!). There is an interesting article idea for you -- whether the summer blockbuster should be viewed as a genre. If it can be viewed as a genre - then Freidberg-Seltzer may be brilliant to be the first ones to recognize it.

Lastly, the ending of Meet the Spartans is really dadaist - the same thing happened in the world of high art in the early 1900's ... and everybody was like, "for what the hell did I just spend 20 duckets?"

Eh, teen movie and date movie were parodies of genre only in name. Really, they were parodies of specific movies in that genre. That is what makes their work hackery. Instead of getting to the true 'essential' features of the genre and riffing off of that like Airplane and the Naked Gun, they instead reference details from extremly recent movies. That's both easy to do, requiring extremly little thought from the writers stand point, and also easy for the audience who don't have to think about underlying dynamics, but only specific scenes. It's worse than family guy really.

Jasmcarl point about the specific movies is good, but I don think it really gets whats wrong with these Friedberg-Seltzer movies. Mel Brooks did it twice with Space Balls, which is entirely from Star Wars 4-6, and Men in Tights, which was better than the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie it spoofed. It is about the writing talent that goes into the movies that makes them good. If Mel Brooks or the Zucker Brothers (both of them) made a real effort at making a movie with the same source material, I think it would have been funny, but these hacks have absolutely no talent whatsoever.

P.S. Don't knock Family Guy. I know I know, it is a bunch of jokes that are interchangeable and unrelated to storylines written by a tank full of manatees, but the jokes are actually funny, and it's a free tv show.

I'm not convinced about your distinction between parody and satire in regard to these Freidberg/Seltzer movies. Meet the Spartans and Scary Movie pretty much have the same method... trot out movies/pop culture references for "jokes." You could probably break down little bits of Meet the Spartans and say, "here, they parody juvenile homoerotic comic book movies," which is pretty much a genre. It's a distinction without a difference. You're saying that somehow, Scary Movie has more artistic merit based on this distinction, which is a stretch. I think Scary Movie has "more artistic merit" because it fails less at being funny.

Besides, we're waayyyy overthinking these movies. I'm 100% convinced that Scary Movie is better because the Wayans brothers directed and co-wrote it. They're not comedic geniuses or anything, but compared to ultrahacks Freidberg and Seltzer...