With the Glasses and the Pony Tail

The success of Scary Movie inspired a whole new wave of parody films. Not just more Scary Movie sequels, although (as we’ve seen) plenty of those came out as well, but other films looking to parody other genres. Two of the writers on Scary Movie, long time filmmaking partners Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, would go on to make plenty of those films (Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Disaster Movie, just to name a few), but they weren’t the only ones getting in on the parody comedy. Before their long run dominating the genre, there was Not Another Teen Movie, a parody of, yes, teen movies.

Masterminded by director Joel Gallen (who mostly directed television specials before and after this film), Not Another Teen Movie was a 2001 pastiche of just about every film about teens that had ever been made. It primarily takes its cues from She’s All That, with its plot about taking a so-called “ugly” girl and turning her into prom queen material, but it also acted as a sendup of anything and everything teen related the filmmakers thought of. This included obvious references to American Beauty, American Pie, Bring It On, Can’t Hardy Wait, Cruel Intentions, Never Been Kissed, Rudy, Varsity Blues, and The Breakfast Club, among many others.

Released in the wake of Scary Movie, it’s pretty obvious that the film was meant to cash in on that movie's sudden and unexpected success. It also seems mercenary, with studios Columbia Pictures and Original Film clearly expecting to follow the trend and have another easy win. And, technically, they did. Made on a budget of just $15 Mil (which seems pretty ridiculous considering some of the members of its cast), the film went on to make $66.5 Mil at the Box Office. That’s nowhere near the over $200 Mil that Scary Movie made, but still profitable for such a small film.

The movie stars Chyler Leigh as Janey Briggs, the so-called "Pretty Ugly Girl". She’s a free spirit, one that doesn’t buck to the pressures of teen society, walking around with her glasses and her ponytail and paint on her coveralls. Her only friend is Ricky Lipman (Eric Jungmann), "The Obsessed Best Friend", who has a crush on her that she never, ever notices. Her dream is to study abroad in an art program in Paris, France, but her family is poor and she likely would never be able to afford it.

Enter Jake Wyler (Chris Evans), "The Popular Jock". As one of the quarterbacks on the football team, Jake is easily the most popular guy in school. He figures any girl would love to be on his arm, which he says to his friends, including "The Cocky Blond Guy" Austin (Eric Christian Olsen) and "The Token Black Guy" Malik (Deon Richmond). Austin decides this is the perfect time to make a bet and he says if Jake can make any girl pretty, why not put it to the test. Take the ugliest girl on campus and make her prom queen… and that ugly girl is Janey. Now Jake has to find a way to make this ugly duckling into a beautiful swan… but in the process he might just find there’s more to Janey than he ever could have expected.

Although not shot-for-shot, the plot of Not Another Teen Movie is basically just She’s All That with some extra jokes (and a lot of nudity and crude humor) thrown in. Original this isn’t, and that was a major criticism many reviewers had. “This is just a different, better movie made again.” Considering that one of the greatest parody movies of all time, Airplane!, was literally just another film, Zero Hour!, made again but with jokes, that criticism seems a little shallow. Still, it’s hard to ignore that She’s All That had come out only two years prior, so there was probably a better, older film that could have been remade that wouldn’t have left critics feeling this film was a little stale.

Personally I don’t agree with the knock against the film, but I will also admit that I didn’t come to this movie until a few years after it was originally released… and that I also had never seen She’s All That. I get the movie, don’t get me wrong. It’s basically just My Fair Lady (aka Pygmalion) with a teen skin. The plot is functional and does the job, and Not Another Teen Movie has a lot of fun poking holes in the concept, like how an “ugly” girl in Hollywood movies can be made pretty just by having her take off her glasses and let down her hair. Janey was pretty all along, just like how Rachael Leigh Cook's Laney Boggs was pretty all along in She’s All That. The whole concept is, really, just silly.

Only that framework, Not Another Teen Movie crafts its parodies. Making Jake a footballer lets them have some sports movies jokes. Giving Jake an evil sister allows them to riff on Cruel Intentions. The younger kids in their own B-plot can lust after a girl modeled on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait. The references are obvious, but the movie makes a lot of hay out of not just bringing these characters, with their stories, in but then also ramping up the awkwardness and the non-sequitors to create really funny scenes.

Certainly the strongest weapon the film has is Chris Evans as Jake. This film came out early in Evans’s career, before he’d even landed his role as Johnny Storm in the 2000s Fantastic Four movies. Even here, though, he shows remarkable charisma and comedic timing, carrying scenes that really shouldn’t work without him. Chyler Leigh plays well opposite him as Janey even if she doesn’t get nearly as many amusing scenes. She’s the love interest and, at times, the foil, but the two have solid on-screen chemistry and they’re both clearly having a blast making the movies.

Still, not everything about the movie works as well as it should. There’s not a lot of meat to the movie, despite it stealing most of the plot from She’s All That, so it has to throw in a lot of other characters, and a lot of storylines, very few of which actually pay off. Jake was demoted to third-string quarterback before the movie starts, and that doesn’t get resolved. The three younger teens make a pact to all lose their virginities by Prom, and only one of them even comes close. Plenty of people raise storylines that come close to finishing but don’t quite get there, and even the climax feels kind of muddled, like the film doesn’t really know how to end so it just gives up. It’s a very loose, shaggy movie that could have used a bit more polish.

For what it is, though, it’s very amusing and very silly. It’s not the best parody movie around, but I do like all that it tries for, and how many jokes it manages to land. This was the prime era for a parody resurgence, so even if Not Another Teen Movie did everything right, it still helped show how well things could work. This is a good film to pop on when you just want something silly and fun, with a few charismatic people giving it their all. Considering how much dreck the genre would crank out eventually, I’ll take Not Another Teen Movie over most of them any day of the week.