Sometimes a parody movie is so good that it actually ends up being a stronger entry in the genre it spoofs than most straightforward entries in that genre. Shaun of the Dead is better than most zombie movies, Paul is better than most alien visitor movies, and Top Secret! is better than any of Elvis Presley’s rock ‘n’ roll musicals. It’s common for parody movies to not even work as comedies, like Disaster Movie or Vampires Suck, but the very best are not only great comedies, but great movies.

If a filmmaker sets out to satirize a genre, it’s usually because they have a deep affection for that genre, so the last thing they want to do is make a bad addition to it. They know what makes their chosen genre so great and what an entry in that genre needs to do to deliver the goods. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg knew what fans wanted from a great “buddy cop” movie when they made Hot Fuzz. Wes Craven knew how to deliver a great slasher underneath the sly self-awareness of Scream.

10

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

When Funny or Die released a fake trailer for a satirical biopic of “Weird Al” Yankovic, the real Yankovic saw a great opportunity to spoof the onslaught of musician biopics. He teamed up with the fake trailer’s director, Eric Appel, to turn the fake trailer into a feature-length lampoon of music biopics. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story lambasts the biopic genre’s oversimplification and melodramatization of musicians’ lives, parodying music biopics the same way that Weird Al’s songs parody the hits.

But here’s the thing: against all odds, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a great movie. It’s a better music biopic than Elvis or Bohemian Rhapsody or Back to Black. Sure, it takes plenty of artistic liberties – Yankovic didn’t really have a tumultuous romance with Madonna, and he didn’t really go to Colombia to singlehandedly slaughter the Medellín Cartel – but what music biopic doesn’t take artistic liberties with its subject’s life story?

9

Kingsman: The Secret Service

After seeing the gritty realism of Casino Royale and the Bourne movies, Matthew Vaughn set out to inject some old-fashioned fun back into the spy genre with Kingsman: The Secret Service. Although it was loosely based on the Mark Millar comic book of the same name, Vaughn took the Kingsman franchise in his own direction in the big-screen adaptation. When it hit theaters in 2014, Kingsman: The Secret Service was a breath of fresh air that revitalized the spy genre.

It’s a wild, bombastic, no-holds-barred spy adventure, but at its heart, it’s a touching father-son story. The mentor-mentee relationship between Colin Firth’s Harry Hart and Taron Egerton’s Eggsy hits on an emotional level that most globetrotting spy thrillers fail to reach. Kingsman is much more engaging than most recent spy films, like The 355 and Red Sparrow.

8

Deadpool

In the Marvel comics, Deadpool is both a hilarious satirical subversion of the superhero genre and an iconic superhero in his own right. His first solo movie pulled off the same trick: it’s both a spot-on spoof of modern superhero blockbusters and one of the greatest superhero movies ever made. Ryan Reynolds was perfectly cast as Wade Wilson, nailing both the high-octane action-hero physicality and the fourth-wall-breaking hilarity for a pitch-perfect on-screen portrayal of the character.

Most superhero origin movies are trite and formulaic, but Deadpool subverts that formula by breaking up its origin story with a present-day hero-versus-villain storyline. Just when the origin story starts to become boring, the movie races forward in time to show a fully-fledged Deadpool hunting down his arch-nemesis, Francis. Deadpool is both a great superhero movie spoof and a great superhero movie.

7

Galaxy Quest

While Spaceballs will always be in Star Wars’ shadow, Galaxy Quest has actually managed to transcend most of the Star Trek media it parodies. The story sees the washed-up cast of an old Star Trek-style sci-fi series being abducted by aliens who mistook the episodes of their TV show for historical records of their many triumphs against intergalactic enemies. So, these pretentious Hollywood actors who resent each other are forced to come together and work as a team.

On top of being a great satire of Star Trek and its fervent fan base, Galaxy Quest is a pretty compelling sci-fi movie in its own right. In fact, many Star Trek fans consider it to be a better Star Trek movie than most of the official Star Trek movies. At the 2013 Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, a fan poll ranked Galaxy Quest as the seventh best Star Trek film ever made (via IGN).

6

Airplane!

When the comedy dream team of Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker made Airplane!, the disaster movie genre was really taking off (no pun intended). Movies like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, and the Airport series were blowing up the box office with their star-studded casts and special effects spectacle. Airplane! has an inflatable autopilot, a glitzy disco dance sequence, and a soldier with PTSD who thinks he’s Ethel Merman – but it’s still better than most disaster movies.

It takes its narrative from Zero Hour!, which played the story of a flight being doomed by dodgy fish totally straight, and Airplane!’s satirical lampooning is a much more effective telling of that story. It’s a lot more compelling than any of the disaster movies it spoofs – especially the mediocre Airport films, which have aged pretty badly. Airplane! is both a ludicrous comedy and a gripping disaster film.

5

Shaun Of The Dead

Inspired by a zombie-infested episode of their cult hit sitcom Spaced, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg set out to write their own zombie movie. Shaun of the Dead is a parody of zombie films, setting a Richard Curtis-style romantic comedy against the backdrop of a zombie apocalypse, but it would also work just as well as a straightforward zombie movie if all the jokes were removed. From the ominous early warning signs of the end-times to the many jump scares and gore sequences on “Z-Day,” Shaun of the Dead nails the zombie genre.

Wright transplants the familiar George A. Romero zombie movie formula into a British setting. The survivors barricade themselves in a pub to wait out the end of the world. Shaun of the Dead is funnier than most comedies, but it’s also scarier than most zombie movies.

4

The Incredibles

Pixar combined the action-packed thrills of the superhero genre with the relatable foibles of a family sitcom in The Incredibles. Set in a Watchmen-like world in which superheroes have been outlawed, The Incredibles revolves around a family of superheroes hiding out in the suburbs. Not only is The Incredibles a fun, subversive comedy combining the high stakes of superhero comics with the low stakes of family life; it’s one of the greatest superhero movies ever made.

There have been a grand total of three attempts to bring the Fantastic Four to the big screen, and The Incredibles is a much better Fantastic Four movie than any of them. Its action sequences use the characters’ superpowers more creatively than most superhero movies. The emotions of the family dynamics land more effectively than most superhero team movies. Unlike most superhero films, The Incredibles is a masterpiece.

3

Blazing Saddles

Mel Brooks satirized the western genre’s penchant for whitewashing American history with his groundbreaking western spoof Blazing Saddles. Up to that point, most western movies had glorified white gunslingers and vilified everyone else. Blazing Saddles revolves around a corrupt white politician who hires a Black sheriff in the hope that he’ll run the town into the ground and allow him to pave over it with a railway. But the sheriff turns out to be so great at his job that he saves the town and brings the crooked politician and his cronies to justice.

Not only is this a perfect parody of the western genre’s whitewashing and the absurdity of racism; it’s also a great western story in its own right. Sheriff Bart is an easy hero to root for and look up to. Before it demolishes the fourth wall in its third act, Blazing Saddles is a classic western.

2

Scream

After Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre established the slasher genre in the ‘70s, slashers dominated horror cinema throughout the ‘80s. By the early ‘90s, the genre had seemingly been completely exhausted; its formula was familiar to audiences and the kills couldn’t get any more gruesome. And then Wes Craven came along to helm Scream, which revitalized the slasher genre with a healthy dose of postmodern self-awareness.

Scream acknowledged how familiar the slasher formula had gotten with a cast of characters who know the rules of the kind of horror movie they’re in. When a masked killer starts picking them off, they’re savvy enough to avoid all the usual traps. But Scream isn’t just a meta meditation on the slasher genre; Craven’s direction of the horror sequences is so razor-sharp that it also ranks as one of the greatest slashers ever made.

1

Hot Fuzz

After spoofing the zombie genre in Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg tackled the “buddy cop” genre in Hot Fuzz. Like many buddy cop classics before it, Hot Fuzz pairs up two mismatched detectives as they uncover a sinister criminal conspiracy. Pegg’s big-city cop Nicholas Angel is teamed up with Nick Frost’s bumbling small-town cop Danny Butterman when he’s transferred to the sleepy village of Sandford.

Hot Fuzz satirizes all the familiar tropes and conventions of buddy cop movies, but it’s also a stronger entry in the action, comedy, and mystery genres than most of its peers. Its action is more thrilling, its characters are more well-rounded, and its plot is more compelling than 99% of the buddy cop movies out there. It stands alongside the very best the genre has to offer, like 48 Hrs. and Lethal Weapon.

Source: IGN