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The Princess Bride
Is that a kissing movie?
yes, you’re very smart… shut up!
To blaaathe…
Blazing Saddles, especially since, as they say, you couldn’t make it today. 'Course, now that’s less because you can’t say the n-word and more because all the anti-racism would trigger the MAGA CHUDs.
Exactly! Always seems like the ‘you could never make it today!’ crowd is saying that the woke mob would get mad or some shit.
Do they think that Blazing Saddles isn’t woke? The whole fucking movie is making fun of dumb white racists!
making fun of dumb white racists!
“You know … morons.”
The common clay of the west!
I wish I could find it again, but years ago I saw a video about why you couldn’t make Blazing Saddles today, aside from it already existing/permission/etc. It wasn’t the racism or anything, or how people today are too sensitive.
It couldn’t be made today because Blazing Saddles basically destroyed the entire genre.
Prior to its release, Westerns were everywhere. They were incredibly popular, with countless movies and TV shows released every year. Then this movie comes along, points out all of the overused tropes, and reveals the formula they’ve all been using. The genre of Westerns has never recovered. It would be lampooning obscure content with dated references that people don’t understand.
That’s the real reason it couldn’t be made today.
That’s a reason it wouldn’t be made today. Not “couldn’t”
The only reason it “couldn’t” be made is that Mel Brooks won’t license his work for a remake. Everything else is “wouldn’t”, including any concerns about people taking offense. There are entire studios dedicated to doing exactly that.
It’s not the actual main thesis of the video so I may be wrong but that sounds familiar to a portion of Lindsay Ellis’s video on Mel Brooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE (unfortunately, I don’t have the spoons to try and rewatch the whole thing to double check, for sure).
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I’ve seen TV censor the freaking FARTING 'ROUND THE CAMPFIRE scene, while keeping the slurs.
But also: All Mel Brooks’ stuff would fit the question, imo. Not just Blazing Saddles.
If I’m honest, I could do without the farting around the campfire scene.
It is slightly funnier seeing them lift a leg to belch.
They eat beans and it gives them gas. It’s not a constructed joke. It’s like in Airplane 2: The Sequel where they take the Lunar Shuttle to 0.5 Worp speed and it does the trippy Star Trek visuals, and Elaine takes a drag from a joint and says “oh wow.” Dya get it? She did drugs, now she’s high. Didja get it?
Blazing saddles is a fun and wild ride. I came in expecting nothing and got kind off for blown off my socks! This movie is so much fun.
Office Space
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Life of Brian, too. I also love The Meaning of Life, but I recognize it’s not as popular.
Idiocracy. started as a comedy, evolved through time in a documentary.
In Idiocracy, people take a crisis seriously, the state is actively looking for experts to solve the crisis, and defers to them quickly, and when evidence appears people change their minds. Finally they elect the person with the actual best plan for the future.
Idiocracy fundamentally has a wrong view of American stupidity. Idiocracy treats Americans as well-meaning but too complacent to care about the long-term consequences. It declares that society’s problems are from a (genetic) lack of useful effort.
But, as the past 10 years have made increasingly hard to deny, American “stupid people” are actively hostile to reckoning with the long-term consequences of their actions. Ignorance was only ever an excuse. It’s entitlement rather than complacency, and society’s problems come from (‘genetically smart’) people deliberately bending useful effort towards societal harm for personal gain.
But while it may not have been quite as grating, Idiocracy was already wrong when it came out. Civil rights were suppressed with “ignorant” excuses that were a fig leaf on the desire to do harm. The eugenics the movie takes as a premise - that “smart people” breeding leads to a smart world and inversely for “stupid people” - is itself a form of “ignorance” about genetics that was actively being used as a fig leaf for genocide in the US in the century before.
But no, I’m sure you “just don’t get” how Idiocracy is endorsing a genocidal view eugenics. It’s easier to “believe” brawndo makes the plants grow.
While you’re correct that the movie highlights a leader searching for a solution to a problem, you overlook the unspoken criticism of society within the movie: the plainly evident results of generations of stupid Americans who were too complacent, and actively hostile, to reckoning with the long-term consequences of their actions.
Airplane
Three amigos!
Clue.
Just saw that with the score played live by a symphony.
Clue was partially ruined by its theater gag; during its original theatrical run, you’d buy a ticket, go see a ~70 minute movie that randomly had one of the three endings. It flopped. The cable/VHS edit that hastily crammed all three endings together made it longer, you got all the content there was, and…it works better on TV.
Josie and the Pussycats
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Idiocracy!
Airplane!
The Jerk
Naked Gun*
Spaceballs
Plains Trains and Automobile’s
Kung Fu Hustle
Kung Pao Enter the Fist
Clerks, Mallrats
Evil Dead* - Army of Darkness
Tucker and Dale VS Evil
Shaun of the Dead - Hot Fuz
The Big Lebowski
Plains Trains and Automobile’s
Hell yeah! Excellent road trip movie and one of the best holiday movies there is. Steve Martin and John Candy were brilliant together.
This is the only movie i watch almost every year. I don’t know if it’s just pure nostalgia, but i always just loved the movie. John Candy plays the fuck out of his character. Like Steve Martin legitimate felt bad after the scene in the motel where he gave him a lot of shit. Every time i watch it i think about how absolutely annoying he is, and after his monologue i go: well maybe it’s not that bad.
Apparently a lot of people hate that movie.
it’s so good. Candy’s character in PT&A and Home Alone are some of my favorites (he recorded all his stuff for home alone in a single fucking DAY of filming! with tons of adlibs that never made it into the final! as a favor to Reitmann and took only scale pay, so like, a few hundred bucks!)
Good list. I think the only one I’d disagree with is Mallrats. Clerks is still brilliant, but last time I put on Mallrats it didn’t hit at all.
Loved mallrats.
That kid is back on the escalator again!
I hope his pants get caught and a bloodbath ensues!
Blade Runner
Edit: I should take some reading comprehension classes…
- Mars Attacks!
- Galaxy Quest
Ack ack!
:: yodeling intensifies::
The first of the Corneto Trilogy: Shawn of the Dead, Hot Fuzz (and Spaced)
World’s End is also good. It has just as many details for added fun as the first two except the ending feels a bit off even though it follows the theme of Simon’s character ending up with the world changed where he doesn’t have to.
