Funniest movie spoofs (MSNBC)

[Brian Damage]

“Young Frankenstein” (1974)
The genius of Mel Brooks’ take on 1930s monster movies wasn’t that is was so funny (which it was), it was that it was played so straight. Shot in atmospheric black-and-white and using many of the same props and set pieces as director James Whale’s original “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein,” the film pays tribute while it parodies. The dapper “Puttin’ On The Ritz” duet between the creator and his creation is the last of the truly great musical numbers that Brooks insisted on putting in almost all of his films, but Madeline Kahn nearly trumps even that at the very end with a single, shock-haired hiss.

[Brian Damage]

“Airplane!” (1980)
Yes, yes: don’t call him Shirley. But even without the corny, Borscht Belt-vintage jokes, “Airplane!” still nails it as a canny sendup of 1957’s “Zero Hour!” and “Airport 1975,” with writers/directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker taking the basic plots and throwing just about every single joke that they could possibly imagine at the screen. In the process, they also slip a whoopee cushion to “Jaws,” “From Here To Eternity,” “Saturday Night Fever” and the disaster movies that schlockmeister Irwin Allen foisted on the public in the 1970s. Most importantly, “Airplane!” heralded the dawn of a brave new career for Leslie Nielsen, who taught the world that saying unfunny things in an unfunny way could lead to comedy superstardom.

[Brian Damage]

“Top Secret!” (1984)
If “Airplane!” set the standard, then “Top Secret!” was the perfection of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker formula. Sight gags (a taxi chase transforms into a game of Pac-Man)! Awful puns (an opera house’s prop room is full of propellers)! Inspired moments of jaw-dropping lunacy (the visit to a Swedish bookstore, filmed entirely backwards)! All this, plus pop songs both ridiculous (“Skeet Surfing”) and sublime (“How Silly Can You Get”). The story involves American pop singer Nick Rivers, who tours East Germany and gets embroiled in... some intrigue or other. Along the way, he will encounter a gravity-defying scientist’s daughter (who gets her own extended “Blue Lagoon” flashback), the French resistance and the funniest cow in a castle-storming scene since “Monty Python And The Holy Grail.”

[Brian Damage]

“Scream” (1996)
There’s an argument to be made that Wes Craven’s winking horror movie didn’t mock the conventions of its genre so much as comment on it, more meta than spoof. But in the self-aware, ultra-ironic 1990s, the two amounted to more or less the same thing. (“Scream” even spawned its own spoof, the “Scary Movie” franchise, proof of just how meta it was.) When movie nerd Randy Meeks starts listing off the rules for survival (“Number one: you can never have sex”), it’s an acknowledgement of the formulaic nature of slasher flicks that elicits chuckles... until Rose McGowan walks into that garage. The metaspoofing carried over through to “Scream 2,” which skewered the pretensions, clichés and stakes-raising of sequels, and “Scream 3,” which hilariously mocked trilogy finales that suck out loud. Or... hey, wait a minute...

[Brian Damage]

“South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut” (1999)
It’s not until Sheila Broflovski decides to hold our neighbor to the north accountable for her son’s potty mouth and the nation’s ills that it becomes evident that this is going to be a musical. It’s not until Satan delivers an impassioned princess-style ballad about his dream of going where the people go that Trey Parker and Matt Stone reveal that (despite sideswiping “Les Misérables” along the way) it’s Disney, and not Broadway, they have in their sights. Michael McDonald’s closing-credits song “Eyes Of A Child” is so treacly and earnest that many didn’t get the joke. In its way, it’s the funniest thing in the entire film.

[TJL]

I would have left "Scream" off this particular list, but otherwise I actually like this MSNBC list.

There's a first for everything.

[Liza]

Originally Posted by Brian Damage

“Airplane!” (1980)
Yes, yes: don’t call him Shirley. But even without the corny, Borscht Belt-vintage jokes, “Airplane!” still nails it as a canny sendup of 1957’s “Zero Hour!” and “Airport 1975,” with writers/directors David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker taking the basic plots and throwing just about every single joke that they could possibly imagine at the screen. In the process, they also slip a whoopee cushion to “Jaws,” “From Here To Eternity,” “Saturday Night Fever” and the disaster movies that schlockmeister Irwin Allen foisted on the public in the 1970s. Most importantly, “Airplane!” heralded the dawn of a brave new career for Leslie Nielsen, who taught the world that saying unfunny things in an unfunny way could lead to comedy superstardom.

I think Airplane owes more to the movie Airport which (obviously) proceeded Airport 1975. I know, I'm a nit picker

Originally Posted by Brian Damage

“Young Frankenstein” (1974)
The genius of Mel Brooks’ take on 1930s monster movies wasn’t that is was so funny (which it was), it was that it was played so straight. Shot in atmospheric black-and-white and using many of the same props and set pieces as director James Whale’s original “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein,” the film pays tribute while it parodies. The dapper “Puttin’ On The Ritz” duet between the creator and his creation is the last of the truly great musical numbers that Brooks insisted on putting in almost all of his films, but Madeline Kahn nearly trumps even that at the very end with a single, shock-haired hiss.

As good as Young Frankenstein is, my favorite Mel Brooks spoof has always been Robin Hood: Men in Tights. And don't tell me there wasn't a great musical number in that one!