by Ben Reinach
There seems to be a disturbing decline with the quality of movies over the past five to seven years with many titles being uninspired, unoriginal, or just down right awful in their own regard. One of the more recent examples of an uninspired movie is Olympus Has Fallen, a movie about terrorists attacking the White House and having the protagonist save the President while up against unrealistic odds. Although the “save the President from some sort of threat” plot has not been used for a reasonable amount of time, another film came out less then a year from Olympus Has Fallen titled White House Down that appear to have the same exact premise with some minor changes in the plot. There is no excuse for copying and pasting the same movie, especially within a year or two.
One of the lowest points in cinema in the last decade was the unexpected amount of parody movies that were positively received by the movie-going masses. For future reference, a parody movie is a movie that uses a very loose plot that enables the director to feature as many characters from popular movies from that same year in the movie, usually in an overly dramatic fashion so that anyone who has any sort of knowledge of pop culture can recognizes them. If I were to categorize what genre these movies fall into, it would be comedy, even though many of the jokes are centered on painfully oblivious pop culture references, poorly done spoofs from the film the parody is trying to rip off, overly cartoony slapstick humor and disgusting bathroom humor.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are known for creating parody movies and have directed many of the movies I remember, such as Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie. I distinctly remember going to see Meet the Spartans with an open mind and saying to myself, “Hey maybe the jokes will be well done and the characters will be bearable to watch.” This did not end up being the case, since I walked out of the theater about 45 minutes in and began to wonder why I thought there would be any redeemable qualities in that movie.
After reading through several movie reviews done by Rustin Thompson on his website The Restless Critic, the impression I got was that American cinema has not been releasing as many quality films as directors from France and other countries. I would agree with Thompson’s point about the decline in American cinema, though there are a few gems released far and few in between the usual garbage. Although cinema has been taking a turn for the worst over the last decade, one can only hope that new directors will be inspired to create their own unique movies that will be as memorable as the classics such as Indiana Jones, The Temple of Doom or Jurassic Park, movies that I still remember today.
One of the lowest points in cinema in the last decade was the unexpected amount of parody movies that were positively received by the movie-going masses. For future reference, a parody movie is a movie that uses a very loose plot that enables the director to feature as many characters from popular movies from that same year in the movie, usually in an overly dramatic fashion so that anyone who has any sort of knowledge of pop culture can recognizes them. If I were to categorize what genre these movies fall into, it would be comedy, even though many of the jokes are centered on painfully oblivious pop culture references, poorly done spoofs from the film the parody is trying to rip off, overly cartoony slapstick humor and disgusting bathroom humor.
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer are known for creating parody movies and have directed many of the movies I remember, such as Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Disaster Movie. I distinctly remember going to see Meet the Spartans with an open mind and saying to myself, “Hey maybe the jokes will be well done and the characters will be bearable to watch.” This did not end up being the case, since I walked out of the theater about 45 minutes in and began to wonder why I thought there would be any redeemable qualities in that movie.
After reading through several movie reviews done by Rustin Thompson on his website The Restless Critic, the impression I got was that American cinema has not been releasing as many quality films as directors from France and other countries. I would agree with Thompson’s point about the decline in American cinema, though there are a few gems released far and few in between the usual garbage. Although cinema has been taking a turn for the worst over the last decade, one can only hope that new directors will be inspired to create their own unique movies that will be as memorable as the classics such as Indiana Jones, The Temple of Doom or Jurassic Park, movies that I still remember today.