We live now in an age of extreme irony, where the jokes in a comedy like this one have to reference other films, TV shows and so on... 1999 gave us at least 3 Hollywood films that made this sort of self- reference device that actually (in this case literally) creates the film:
Bowfinger has the most cinematic approach, because the story is about the creation of a film, and many of the jokes ARE the making of that film. It's a film as the making of another film.
Mystery Men has the best sets, and the references have to do with the performances, a sort of an anti-superhero film where each goofy super-hero tackles his own typical performance, thus creating the joke and the comment on it.
This one has actually the most clever approach in terms of writing, although it is the less successful for me in terms of comedy.
The fun is that they reference Star Trek obviously, which a staple of pop culture, so the audiences can immediately relate. And than they create a little tale of stories creating each other:
-everything is a performances, all actors play actores playing characters, and are actually pretty much all the time in character, starting from the very beginning, when they are at a fan convention, in character (the film ends the same way, thus framing the whole thing as a performance);
-actors are allowed to spoof some part of their own public persona: so Weaver spoofs Ripley, Allen spoofs Buzz Lightyear, Alan Rickman his "shakespearean actor doing Hollywood stuff" (incidentally, i think this is his first Snape...)...
-the most clever self-reference is how they handle the world of the aliens: the aliens come to earth to pick up our heroes because they caught their cheesy TV show on space and took it for real. Before they picked them up, they actually built their world and technology according to what the show on earth showed. So the reality of the aliens imitated the art of the earthlings who than go to the alien world first as actors performing a role, and eventually stop acting and become the roles they first performed. In between, a lot jokes about acting as lying are dropped, and actually the difference between the bad space guys and the good ones is that the bad guys understand the concept of lying. So in order to save the day, our heroes have to turn bad (lying...) acting into believable one. They have to "live" their roles, in other words, they have to stop lying.
This is good stuff in a popcorn package. I'm guessing that things like Deadpool indicate that we are moving on, and that we already went too far in terms of mapping our stories completely (and exclusively) to the reference of themselves. But i think the age we are (maybe) closing now started somewhere in the 90's. IMO, if you want the best of it, you have to check "Tropic Thunder" or "Saneamento Básico" if you're not afraid to leave Hollywood and/or if you want to have clever writing AND a film that matters, all in one.
Bowfinger has the most cinematic approach, because the story is about the creation of a film, and many of the jokes ARE the making of that film. It's a film as the making of another film.
Mystery Men has the best sets, and the references have to do with the performances, a sort of an anti-superhero film where each goofy super-hero tackles his own typical performance, thus creating the joke and the comment on it.
This one has actually the most clever approach in terms of writing, although it is the less successful for me in terms of comedy.
The fun is that they reference Star Trek obviously, which a staple of pop culture, so the audiences can immediately relate. And than they create a little tale of stories creating each other:
-everything is a performances, all actors play actores playing characters, and are actually pretty much all the time in character, starting from the very beginning, when they are at a fan convention, in character (the film ends the same way, thus framing the whole thing as a performance);
-actors are allowed to spoof some part of their own public persona: so Weaver spoofs Ripley, Allen spoofs Buzz Lightyear, Alan Rickman his "shakespearean actor doing Hollywood stuff" (incidentally, i think this is his first Snape...)...
-the most clever self-reference is how they handle the world of the aliens: the aliens come to earth to pick up our heroes because they caught their cheesy TV show on space and took it for real. Before they picked them up, they actually built their world and technology according to what the show on earth showed. So the reality of the aliens imitated the art of the earthlings who than go to the alien world first as actors performing a role, and eventually stop acting and become the roles they first performed. In between, a lot jokes about acting as lying are dropped, and actually the difference between the bad space guys and the good ones is that the bad guys understand the concept of lying. So in order to save the day, our heroes have to turn bad (lying...) acting into believable one. They have to "live" their roles, in other words, they have to stop lying.
This is good stuff in a popcorn package. I'm guessing that things like Deadpool indicate that we are moving on, and that we already went too far in terms of mapping our stories completely (and exclusively) to the reference of themselves. But i think the age we are (maybe) closing now started somewhere in the 90's. IMO, if you want the best of it, you have to check "Tropic Thunder" or "Saneamento Básico" if you're not afraid to leave Hollywood and/or if you want to have clever writing AND a film that matters, all in one.