You know that feeling when you're watching a massive blockbuster and something feels just a little too dramatic? The hero stares into the distance for five seconds too long, or the villain explains their entire plan while holding a glass of scotch. We all see it. But it takes a specific kind of creative genius—or madness—to take those tropes and turn them into a feature-length roast. Movies that make fun of other movies used to be the bread and butter of the box office. They weren't just comedies; they were an essential part of the cinematic ecosystem. They kept the big studios humble.
But honestly, looking at the theater marquee in 2026, where are they? We’ve got plenty of Marvel movies and serious dramas, but the sharp, biting parody seems to have vanished into the world of TikTok skits and YouTube sketches. To understand why, we have to look back at when this genre actually worked and what happened when it started to rot from the inside out.
The Mel Brooks Era and the Art of the Loving Jab
Parody isn't just about mocking something you hate. The best movies that make fun of other movies usually come from a place of deep, obsessive love for the source material. Mel Brooks is the undisputed king of this. When he made Young Frankenstein in 1974, he didn't just buy some cheap lab props. He actually tracked down Kenneth Strickfaden, the guy who designed the original electrical machinery for the 1931 Frankenstein, and used the actual original equipment.
That’s the secret. You have to know the rules to break them that well.
Brooks understood that for a joke to land, the world around it has to feel real. In Blazing Saddles, the satire works because it looks like a legitimate Western. The sets are dusty, the leather is real, and the stakes feel high until a character literally breaks the fourth wall and punches a guy into a different movie set. It’s chaotic, but it’s grounded in a mastery of the genre.
Most people don't realize that Brooks was satirizing the myth of the American West as much as he was satirizing Hollywood’s version of it. He was deconstructing racism and heroism while people were laughing at bean-induced flatulence. That’s a high-wire act that most modern directors wouldn't even attempt.
The ZAZ Revolution: Airplane! and the Straight-Faced Absurdity
If Brooks was the king, the trio of Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker (ZAZ) were the architects of the modern spoof. Airplane! changed everything in 1980. Before this, movies that make fun of other movies often felt like variety shows. ZAZ decided to play it completely straight.
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They hired Robert Stack, Peter Graves, and Leslie Nielsen—actors known for being "serious" and "stony-faced"—and told them to deliver the most ridiculous lines as if they were performing Shakespeare. It worked. It worked so well that it created a whole new career for Leslie Nielsen as a comedic lead.
The brilliance of Airplane! lies in its density. You can watch that movie ten times and still find a joke hidden in the background or a pun you missed. It wasn't just referencing Zero Hour! (the 1957 film it’s almost a shot-for-shot remake of); it was mocking the very idea of the "disaster movie" craze of the 70s.
Then came The Naked Gun. It did for police procedurals what Airplane! did for aviation.
When the Genre Started to Eat Itself
Success breeds imitation. And in Hollywood, imitation usually involves removing the soul and keeping the skeleton. By the late 90s and early 2000s, the parody genre shifted. Scary Movie was a massive hit in 2000 because it arrived exactly when the teen slasher revival (Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer) was peaking. It was timely. It was vulgar. It was actually funny.
But then the "Movie Movie" era happened.
You remember them. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans. These weren't movies that make fun of other movies in a clever way. They were just lists of pop culture references held together by Scotch tape. There’s a massive difference between satire and just pointing at a thing that exists. If a character walks on screen dressed like Jack Sparrow and falls over, that’s not a joke. It’s just a reference.
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Critics like Roger Ebert were notoriously harsh on this trend. Ebert once noted that these films were essentially "non-movies," existing only to satisfy a very brief window of cultural relevance before becoming completely unintelligible three years later. He was right. Try watching Meet the Spartans today. Half the jokes are about celebrities who haven't been in the news for fifteen years. It’s a time capsule of cringe.
Why We Don't See Them Anymore
There are a few reasons why the spoof movie is currently on life support. First, the internet moved faster than the studio system. Back in the day, a movie like Galaxy Quest could spend two years in production and still feel fresh when it poked fun at Star Trek fans. Now, by the time a trailer for a new superhero movie drops, there are already three thousand memes and ten parody videos on TikTok deconstructing it.
The "hot take" economy has killed the need for a feature-length roast.
Second, movies have become self-aware. This is the "Deadpool effect." When the actual blockbusters are already making fun of themselves, how do you parody them? Scream was already a meta-commentary on horror. The Cabin in the Woods basically ended the "teens in a house" genre by explaining every trope as a literal ritual. When the source material is already in on the joke, the parody movie loses its weapon.
Third, the budget gap. Medium-budget comedies have vanished. Studios now want $200 million spectacles or $5 million horror flicks. A $40 million spoof movie is a huge risk because humor doesn't always translate globally, and global box office is what drives the industry now.
The Outliers: Films That Still Get It Right
Not all is lost. Occasionally, someone remembers how to do this correctly. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is perhaps the most underrated movies that make fun of other movies. It didn't just mock Walk the Line; it mocked every single cliché of the "musician biopic." It was so effective that it arguably ruined the genre for a decade. Every time you see a scene in a real biopic where a musician "hears" a hit song in a random household noise, you think of Dewey Cox.
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Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping did the same thing for modern music documentaries. It’s brilliant because it’s specific. It understands the vanity of the modern influencer-musician.
Then there’s Tropic Thunder. It’s a masterpiece of the genre because it’s a triple-threat parody. It’s mocking:
- The self-importance of Method actors.
- The "White Savior" narrative of Vietnam War movies.
- The greed of Hollywood executives.
It works because the action scenes are actually well-directed. It feels like a real movie, which makes the absurdity of Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr.’s characters even funnier.
How to Spot a "Good" Movie Parody
If you’re looking to dive back into this genre, you have to be able to tell the difference between a "reference" and a "parody." Here is how you distinguish the gems from the garbage:
- Consistency of World-Building: Does the movie follow its own internal logic? Even if it's a world where people talk in puns, the stakes should feel real to the characters.
- Targeting the Trope, Not the Title: Great spoofs mock the way stories are told. Bad ones just dress up an actor to look like a famous character.
- The Rewatch Factor: If the jokes only work if you saw a specific news headline from six months ago, it’s a bad parody. If the joke works because it hits on a universal human truth or a cinematic cliché, it’s a winner.
Practical Steps for the Cinephile
If you're tired of the current state of "meta" humor and want to revisit the height of movies that make fun of other movies, start with a curated list that avoids the "Movie Movie" trap.
- Watch the "ZAZ" Trilogy: Airplane!, The Naked Gun, and Top Secret!. This is your foundation.
- Study the Mel Brooks Canon: Specifically Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs. Notice how he uses music and sets to create a sense of scale.
- Find the "Smart" Parodies: Check out This Is Spinal Tap or Best in Show. These use the "mockumentary" format to lampoon specific subcultures.
- Analyze the Modern Meta-Film: Watch Barbarian or Glass Onion. These aren't spoofs in the traditional sense, but they use our knowledge of movie tropes against us to create suspense.
The parody genre isn't dead; it's just evolved. We might not get another Airplane! anytime soon, but the spirit of the spoof lives on in every director who decides to wink at the audience and say, "Yeah, we know this is a movie, too."
Pay attention to the background. Some of the best jokes in movies that make fun of other movies are the ones they don't even tell you to look at. That’s where the real craft lives. Stop watching the 30-second clips on your phone and sit down for the full 90 minutes. You’ll realize that being a critic of cinema is a lot more fun when you’re doing it through a lens of absurd comedy.
Check your local streaming libraries for the Criterion Collection’s essays on parody. They often break down the technical side of how these films are shot to mimic their targets. It’ll change the way you see every "serious" movie you watch afterward. Once you see the pattern, you can’t unsee it. And that’s the whole point.