Not Another Teen Movie

2001

Directed by Joel Gallen

Welcome back to Movie Monday, where I continue my therapeutic journey through the films that have personally offended my sensibilities over the years. As always, the standard disclaimer applies: this list represents my deeply subjective opinions, forged in the fires of personal taste and specific viewing experiences that may bear no resemblance to your own. If Not Another Teen Movie holds a special place in your heart—if it defined your early 2000s sense of humor, if you can quote entire scenes verbatim, if the soundtrack got you through high school—I’m not here to invalidate that connection. I’m just here to explain why, for me, this movie represents everything that went wrong with comedy in the 2000s.

This week brings us to number 35: Not Another Teen Movie, a 2001 parody that attempted to do for teen films what Airplane! did for disaster movies and ended up doing something far less impressive.

My Journey Through John Hughes High

I first encountered Not Another Teen Movie sometime in 2002, probably spring semester of my first senior year. My roommates and I made a pilgrimage to our local video store—remember those?—looking for something mindless to watch as a study break. The premise seemed promising enough: a send-up of all those teen movies we’d grown up watching throughout the ’80s and ’90s. We’d all seen She’s All That, most of us had endured American Pie, and we recognized the teen movie formula well enough to appreciate it being skewered.

What we got instead was 89 minutes of increasingly desperate attempts to shock us into laughter.

I remember watching it in our cramped dorm room, probably with too many people crammed onto secondhand furniture, definitely with someone complaining about the picture quality on our tiny television. I’m sure some people in the room laughed more than I did—comedy is subjective, after all, and college-aged males are perhaps the ideal demographic for jokes about ejaculating into French toast. But I recall feeling increasingly exhausted by the whole exercise, like I was watching someone frantically point at things and yell “Remember this? Remember this?!” without actually saying anything interesting about any of it.

Fast-forward to my recent rewatch in preparation for this post, and I’m disappointed to report that middle-aged me finds the film even less funny than college-aged me did. At least in 2002, the references were relatively fresh. Watching it now, with the benefit of two decades of distance, only highlights how ephemeral this kind of comedy is and how poorly it ages.

The Parody Problem

Before I eviscerate this particular film, let me establish my credentials and biases regarding the parody genre. I consider Airplane! and Blazing Saddles to be genuine classics—films that understand their target material so well that they can deconstruct it while still functioning as entertaining stories in their own right. I love Young Frankenstein. I’m even a fan of Spaceballs, despite its flaws.

But here’s the thing about those films: they work because they’re making actual jokes, not just references. When Airplane! parodies disaster movies, it’s not enough to simply point at the conventions and say “Hey, remember when disaster movies did this?” The film creates absurdist humor that escalates beyond mere recognition. When Mel Brooks parodies Westerns or horror films, he’s not just listing off tropes—he’s finding the inherent comedy in those tropes and amplifying it.

Not Another Teen Movie, along with most of the parody films that plagued the 2000s, operates on a fundamentally different principle. The jokes aren’t “this is funny because we’re subverting your expectations” but rather “this is funny because you recognize where this came from.” It’s comedy as scavenger hunt, where the laugh comes from spotting the reference rather than from any actual wit in how that reference is deployed.

This is the model that Scary Movie pioneered (or at least popularized) in 2000, and it spawned an avalanche of increasingly terrible imitators: Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie. I gave up on the Scary Movie franchise after the second installment, and I’ve successfully avoided the rest of that cinematic landfill. Not Another Teen Movie has the dubious distinction of being early in this particular trend, before the formula had been completely beaten to death, but it helped establish the template that would make the genre unwatchable.

The Plot That Wasn’t

The film ostensibly tells a story—it’s primarily a spoof of She’s All That, with the basic premise of a popular jock (Chris Evans, in a pre-Captain America role that must make him wince in retrospect) betting that he can turn a nerdy girl (Chyler Leigh) into the prom queen. But calling this a “plot” is generous. It’s more accurate to describe it as a framework on which to hang as many references to other teen movies as possible.

And boy, are there references. The Wikipedia entry for this film reads like a comprehensive catalog of late-’80s and ’90s teen cinema: She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You, Can’t Hardly Wait, Pretty in Pink, Varsity Blues, American Beauty, American Pie, Bring It On, Can’t Buy Me Love, Cruel Intentions, Dazed and Confused, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Grease, Jawbreaker, Lucas, Never Been Kissed, Risky Business, Road Trip, Rudy, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club.

That’s not a film. That’s a checklist.

I’m fairly certain I’ve seen and enjoyed most, if not all, of these referenced films. I can recognize American Pie‘s place in pop culture as a raunchy teen comedy that actually earned its laughs. I appreciate that these movies are fair game for mockery—anything you put into the world becomes part of the cultural conversation, and comedy should have the freedom to poke fun at whatever it wants. But recognition isn’t the same as comedy, and Not Another Teen Movie seems fundamentally confused about this distinction.

The film is so busy making sure you know which movie each scene is referencing that it forgets to make those scenes funny on their own merits. It’s like watching someone perform a mediocre impression—yes, I can tell you’re doing Sean Connery, but are you actually saying anything funny, or are you just doing the voice?

The Gross-Out Epidemic

If there’s one defining characteristic of early 2000s comedy, it’s the belief that shock value equals humor. Not Another Teen Movie embraces this philosophy with the enthusiasm of a teenager who just learned he can swear without his parents hearing.

The film is stuffed with gross-out gags that seem designed purely to make the audience go “Eww!” without any actual comedic structure around them. There’s a chef who ejaculates into the protagonist’s French toast. There’s extensive focus on bodily fluids and functions. There’s the “foreign exchange student” character whose entire joke is that she’s always naked. These aren’t jokes—they’re provocations masquerading as jokes.

The problem with shock comedy is that it has diminishing returns. The first time you do something outrageous, you might get a reaction. The tenth time, you’re just being tedious. Not Another Teen Movie throws so much crude material at the screen that it all becomes numbing white noise. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a middle schooler yelling curse words—yes, you’re being transgressive, but transgression without purpose or wit is just obnoxious.

What made American Pie work (for those who enjoyed it) was that the gross-out humor served character and story. The infamous pie scene is memorable not just because it’s shocking, but because it perfectly captures adolescent sexual confusion and desperation. Not Another Teen Movie gives us gross-out moments purely for their own sake, with no connection to character or meaningful satire of the genre.

The Cruel Intentions Problem

Among the film’s many questionable choices, perhaps none is more uncomfortable than the incest subplot. The character of Catherine Wyler (Mia Kirshner) is sexually attracted to her brother Jake, which is apparently supposed to be funny because it’s parodying the step-sibling sexual tension in Cruel Intentions.

But here’s the thing: in Cruel Intentions, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe are step-siblings, not blood relatives. That’s still morally questionable, but it’s a different category of questionable. Not Another Teen Movie removes even that thin veneer of plausible deniability and just goes straight for actual incestuous desire, played for laughs.

The film seems to think this is edgy satire, but it’s actually just uncomfortable. Catherine makes explicit sexual advances toward her brother throughout the film, culminating in a dance-off where she “dances sexually” with him at prom. The movie presents this as outrageous comedy rather than the deeply disturbing family dynamic it would be in reality.

This exemplifies one of the film’s core problems: it doesn’t understand the difference between parodying something and just doing a more extreme version of that thing. Satire requires perspective and commentary. This is just amplification without insight.

The Sexual Politics Trainwreck

Not Another Teen Movie was released in 2001, which means it predates our current cultural conversations about consent, objectification, and representation by a good decade or more. I’m not going to judge it entirely by contemporary standards—that would be unfair to a film that was a product of its time.

But even by 2001 standards, this movie is uncomfortable in its treatment of women and sexuality. Female characters exist almost exclusively as objects—sex objects, joke objects, obstacles to the male protagonist’s journey. The “joke” about Amanda Becker is that she doesn’t have sex with guys who give her love letters, but she’ll give them handjobs. The “joke” about Areola the foreign exchange student is that she’s always naked and available. The “joke” about Priscilla is that she’s a mean cheerleader whose comeuppance involves getting punched unconscious by a male character.

The film thinks it’s parodying the sexism inherent in teen movies, but it’s actually just replicating that sexism with a knowing wink. That’s not satire—that’s participation with a thin veneer of ironic distance.

The Chris Evans Factor

It’s genuinely surreal to watch Not Another Teen Movie now, knowing that the lead actor would go on to become Captain America, one of the most iconic superheroes in cinema history. Chris Evans does perfectly fine work here, given what he has to work with. He commits to the bit, handles the physical comedy adequately, and manages to make Jake Wyler somewhat likable despite the character being written as a walking collection of teen movie jock tropes.

But you can see him trying to find something real in a movie that has no interest in reality. Evans would go on to demonstrate considerable range and charisma in better films, but here he’s stuck playing a character whose only function is to hit predetermined plot points lifted from better movies.

The same is true for most of the cast. Jaime Pressly, who plays the “nasty cheerleader” Priscilla, is genuinely talented at physical comedy and commits fully to the role. But she’s stuck in a movie that doesn’t know what to do with her beyond making her progressively meaner until she gets punched in the face.

Why This Movie Ages Poorly

Many comedies don’t age well—humor is often tied to specific cultural moments, and what seemed hilarious in context can fall flat decades later. But Not Another Teen Movie ages poorly for a specific reason: it was already dated when it was released.

The film is parodying movies from the ’80s and ’90s, which means it was already operating on nostalgia in 2001. And nostalgia is a tricky thing to parody because parody requires critical distance, while nostalgia requires affection. Not Another Teen Movie can’t decide whether it loves or hates the films it’s spoofing, so it ends up doing neither effectively.

Compare this to something like Scream (1996), which successfully deconstructed horror movie tropes while still functioning as a genuinely scary and engaging horror film. Scream works because it understands that good parody has to work on its own terms first. You can watch Scream without having seen any of the slasher films it references and still have a good time. Not Another Teen Movie requires you to have seen its source material to understand what’s happening, but then doesn’t reward that knowledge with actual insight or humor.

Twenty-five years after its release, watching Not Another Teen Movie feels like watching someone explain jokes from a different era. Yes, I remember She’s All That. Yes, I understand that you’re mocking the “makeover” trope where removing glasses makes someone hot. But pointing at the trope isn’t the same as saying something interesting about it.

The Soundtrack That Dates Everything

The film’s soundtrack deserves its own paragraph of criticism. Not Another Teen Movie covers popular ’80s songs with early 2000s alternative and nu-metal bands: Marilyn Manson covering “Tainted Love,” Smashing Pumpkins covering “Never Let Me Down Again,” System of a Down covering “The Metro.”

These covers are aggressively of their moment, the musical equivalent of wallet chains and frosted tips. They date the film instantly while also being inferior to the originals. It’s a double failure: the covers aren’t good enough to justify their existence, and they serve as a time stamp that prevents the film from feeling timeless in the way that actual classics do.

Even the original song “Prom Tonight,” written by Ben Folds as a Grease parody, feels desperate—it’s trying so hard to be funny that it forgets to be clever.

Why Not Another Teen Movie Earns Its Spot at Number 35

Not Another Teen Movie lands at number 35 on my worst movies list, like most on the list, not because it’s incompetently made—the technical aspects are fine for a studio comedy—but because it represents a particular strain of lazy comedy that dominated the 2000s. This is comedy that mistakes recognition for humor, shock for wit, and referentiality for satire.

The film fails because it has nothing to say. It’s content to simply point at other movies and occasionally add a dick joke or a gross-out gag. There’s no perspective, no insight, no reason for this movie to exist beyond “hey, we can make money by spoofing popular movies.”

I’ve tried to be fair to this film. I’ve acknowledged that comedy is subjective, that my college roommates probably laughed more than I did, that there are people who genuinely love this movie and quote it regularly. But rewatching it in preparation for this post only confirmed my original assessment: this is a movie that was already feeling stale in 2002 and has aged like milk left out in the sun.

It’s not aggressively awful—we still have 34 more entries to go before we hit the absolute bottom of my list—but it’s a tedious slog through references I recognize but don’t need explained, jokes that aren’t actually jokes, and shock humor that was already tired when the film was released.

The Bottom Line

Not Another Teen Movie is what happens when you have a premise but no point. It’s the cinematic equivalent of those Family Guy cutaway gags that just reference something without adding any commentary. “Hey, remember She’s All That? What if we did that but grosser?” is not a sufficient foundation for 89 minutes of entertainment.

The film spawned a generation of increasingly terrible parodies, each one more desperate and less funny than the last. If Not Another Teen Movie has any legacy, it’s as a cautionary tale about the difference between parody and mere imitation, between satire and mockery, between recognizing a trope and actually doing something interesting with that recognition.

I’m grateful that I only had to watch this film twice in my life—once in college and once for this review. I don’t plan on ever subjecting myself to it again. Some movies benefit from repeated viewings. This is not one of them.

Next Week on Movie Monday

Join me next Monday when we continue our descent with number 34 on the list: The Stepfather (2009). Because apparently Hollywood thought they could improve on Terry O’Quinn’s chilling performance in the original 1987 thriller. Spoiler alert: they could not.

Until then, may your parodies have actual points to make and your gross-out humor serve some kind of purpose beyond just being gross.

What are your thoughts on Not Another Teen Movie? Does it hold up better for you than it does for me? Are you one of the people who can quote entire scenes and still finds them funny? Most importantly, did anyone else survive the plague of 2000s parody films, and if so, how did you maintain your sanity? Share your experiences in the comments below—I’m particularly curious to hear from anyone who genuinely thinks the incest subplot was hilarious rather than deeply uncomfortable.