History ShallowParody / LiveActionFilms

* ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' was accused of being a shallow parody by critics when first released in 1987, although most fans today say otherwise. For example, Princess Vespa initially seems more like a parody of fictional princesses in general than of Leia in particular, at least until her CharacterDevelopment after the hairdryer scene. Creator/MelBrooks himself commented on this trope via this film, saying that it's too easy to make fun of bad things and you should "only mock what you love."
* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'': The film is an InNameOnly adaptation of [[Literature/StarshipTroopers the book]] to begin with, so this was inevitable. By his own admission, Creator/PaulVerhoeven only read part of the book and decided that it was endorsing Fascism (which it doesn't; as with all things concerting Creator/RobertAHeinlein, the views expressed in the book are much more complicated), causing the film to [[WindmillPolitical satirize political aspects of the book that it doesn't have]]. Consequently, while the film works overall as a satire of fascism and militarism, its attempts to take on the book are... questionable. The Mobile Infantry are portrayed as a bunch of clueless CannonFodder in an effort to portray them [[FascistButInefficient realistically]], but the book's Mobile Infantry are a highly-trained group of EliteMooks who get badass PoweredArmor, [[YouNukeEm shoulder-mounted nukes]] and are deployed in {{Drop Pod}}s very unlike the film's dropships, and the book goes out of its way to describe how each and every one of them is a OneManArmy. The movie also makes it ambiguous to [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman how sentient the Bugs are]] and implies that HumansAreTheRealMonsters in order to contrast the book's supposed jingoism, even though [[RedundantParody the killing of nonhumans is something that Johnnie Rico grapples with in the book]]. Finally, the Federation is portrayed as a hyper-miltaristic nation in which citizenship can only be obtained through military service as a satire of the book's Federation, where citizenship can be obtained by doing multiple different kinds of public service, not just military-based.

** ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' notes that one "gag" from ''Film/EpicMovie'' takes shallowness to its extreme by having a ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} {{Expy}} flip someone the bird with his claws, which had already been done with the real thing in ''Film/XMen1''. All they did was [[RedundantParody regurgitate a better joke from a better movie]].
** [[WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown Film Brain]] points out the shallowness of ''Film/EpicMovie''[='s=] "parodies" during his review of the movie. Along with the aforementioned Wolverine bit, he found a scene that is stolen word-for-word from ''Film/{{Borat}}'', with only one bit of dialogue referencing the scene's location changed. This, like many of Seltzerberg's "jokes", doesn't really have a punchline and is more just a nod to something in passing. It led Buck to proclaim, "References ARE NOT JOKES!"
* The parodies of Craig Moss are as reviled as Seltzer and Friedberg, if lesser-known (many didn't even hit theaters). Some even go the route of cramming in as many references as possible, thinking that's a joke by itself.
** ''[[Film/TheFortyYearOldVirgin The 41-Year-Old Virgin]] who Film/KnockedUp [[Film/ForgettingSarahMarshall Sarah Marshall]] and Felt Film/{{Superbad}} About It''. "Hey, remember this scene from a Creator/JuddApatow movie? Well, we don't have any writers, so we're just going to do the scene just the same, but make it longer and less funny. [[AttentionDeficitOohShiny Hey]], [[NarrowParody here's the Verizon guy]]!"
** ''[[Film/ThirtyDaysOfNight 30 Nights]] of Film/ParanormalActivity with Film/TheDevilInside [[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' and ''[[Literature/TheTwilightSaga Breaking Wind]]'' largely consist of pop culture references combined with out-and-out plagiarism of dialogue from these movies to pad out the run time. ''Breaking Wind'' is especially bizarre, as despite its title the film is a direct parody of ''Eclipse'', easily the part of the series least suited to parody. Anyone hoping for gags about falling in love with babies will be disappointed.
* ''Film/{{Airplane}}'' includes a parody of a famous scene from ''From Here to Eternity'' despite none of the writers having watched that film. According to the commentary, because the writers had never seen the film, they [[PopCulturalOsmosis didn't even know they were parodying it]].
* ''Film/BikiniBeach'': Frankie Avalon plays a [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion British invasion]] rocker/race car driver called "The Potato Bug" -- but rather than any sort of direct parody of Music/TheBeatles, the character is basically just Creator/TerryThomas in a blond shag wig.
* ''Film/MurderByDeath'' features many parodies of famous fictional detectives, some of which are rather shallow:
** The way Literature/MissMarple and Literature/HerculePoirot are parodied has completely nothing to do with these characters. Miss Marple is prone to long-winding stories about her home village and is a mild-mannered sweet old lady. Poirot is very composed and precise and, most of all, very polite to everyone he meets; he wouldn't ''dream'' of screaming at people. The characters in the film are their opposites, which would work, but none of the others are portrayed that way.
** The film also misses the point of [[Film/TheThinMan Nick Charles]]. Dick Charleston is portrayed as "enormously well-bred" and sophisticated. Nick's ''wife'' is classy, but Nick himself is a streetwise New York flatfoot, and one of the series' {{Running Gag}}s is how little he tries to fit in as a socialite.
* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken to the extreme, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. [[note]]Kazakhstan is only barely in Eastern Europe. The country is almost entirely in Central Asia and ethnic Kazakhs are clearly Asian, not European.[[/note]] Consequently, most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]]. [[JustifiedTrope The driving reason]] for this was that Creator/SachaBaronCohen, a British-born Jewish man of Palestinian and Belarusian descent who can speak Hebrew, can convincingly pass for an Eastern European man but would have no chance in hell of passing for a Central Asian man, and Romania was as close to Central Asia as they could get without him sticking out like a sore thumb.

* ''Film/TheJoyLuckClub'' has an incredibly out of place TakeThat to ''Film/TheWorldOfSuzieWong'', calling it a "horrible racist film". ''Suzie Wong'' actually has a [[FairForItsDay fairly progressive anti-racism message for the time]]. One journalist HY Nahm noted that this is a common attitude among Gen-X Asian Americans who grew up hearing about the movie but [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch never actually saw it]] (and Nahm watched the film after interviewing its lead actress Creator/NancyKwan and was surprised that it was nothing like its reputation). In fact, Nancy Kwan turned down a role in the film specifically because they refused to remove the TakeThat and she found it too mean-spirited.
* ''Film/DarlingLili'' was an attempt by director Blake Edwards to deconstruct the typecasting surrounding Creator/JulieAndrews - who of course was famous for playing the MagicalNanny in both ''Film/MaryPoppins'' and ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic''. She plays Lili Smith - an entertainer in World War I with a reputation as a sweet EnglishRose...who's actually a FemmeFataleSpy. Despite touching on interesting issues, such as Lili's possible frustration at having to preserve the image of something she's not, it only mocks superficial aspects of the Julie Andrews persona - such as cloying songs and a good girl reputation. Both ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg-u5LiZ4qo Better With Bob?]]'' and ''[[https://paralleljulieverse.tumblr.com/post/128480326404/the-sound-of-julie-and-the-cinema-of-blake-edwards The Parallel Julieverse]]'' point out that both Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp were strong, active characters who inspired CharacterDevelopment in others and contributed to their plots - and for all their supposed corniness, both had a BittersweetEnding (Mary leaving the Banks children sadly, and the Von Trapp's having to escape the Nazis). Lili meanwhile ends up a passive DamselInDistress who needs to be saved by all the men around her, and the deconstruction offers up no alternative, in favor of a straight happy ending. As one reviewer put it:
--> "At no point are we invited to pass judgment on this brazen English hussy who is betraying the man she purports to love, because after all, she's still Julie Andrews. Even when she's sinning, she's not sinning for real."
* ''{{Film/Maleficent}}'' - a live action retelling of Disney's ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' - deconstructs the TrueLovesKiss from the original, by having Philip say he can't kiss the unconscious Aurora. This is clearly responding to uncomfortable parallels people drew between the original and date rape. Except, as a writer of ''[[https://www.themarysue.com/consent-sleeping-beauty/ The Mary Sue]]'' pointed out, comparing the climax of Sleeping Beauty to sexual assault is taking it out of context. Aurora is not just merely asleep or unconscious - she's been cursed with an enchanted sleep that she'll never wake from on her own, and the kiss is the only thing that can save her. The kiss is not being done with malicious intent, as it's the only thing that will wake her from the enchanted sleep. Philip is also not some stranger who sees an unconscious girl and decides to kiss her; he's her fiancé who she was in love with, and he was told he had to kiss her to break the curse. And that once Aurora wakes up, she very clearly doesn't have a problem with Philip kissing her.
--> "This is not a drunken accidental hook up, or an older male authority figure taking advantage of a younger co-worker. He is literally saving her from an eternity of sleep... Non-verbal consent is a thing, and Aurora gives Phillip plenty of it in her body language once she is comfortable around him and her reaction to Phillip during her awakening. She is not upset about being kissed, she got kissed by someone she liked, she would have kissed him if she was awake..."

* [[WebVideo/VampireReviews Maven of the Eventide]] felt ''Film/DraculaDeadAndLovingIt'' was a shallow parody of the Dracula mythos - since it makes fun of Lucy's status as the 'slutty best friend', and that detail was [[AdaptationDisplacement from the more recent]] ''Film/BramStokersDracula'' (which, despite the title, was hardly a faithful adaptation). It also goes for the obvious parody of BritishStuffiness, which is pretty ironic in light of how the Hollywood adaptations of the book were far more sanitized.
--> "It doesn't make much sense for Americans to be making fun of British repression when Hollywood's ''Dracula'' movies were [[TamerAndChaster so sterile]] compared to [[Film/HammerHorror Hammer's]]..."
* Films that intend to be GenreDeconstruction sometimes get accused of actually just being watered-down genre pieces made by people who don't really like the genre in question. The generally well-received ''Film/{{Booksmart}}'' got a few negative reviews accusing it of being a standard teen comedy with a few novel elements added to make it seem edgier.
* The Italian movie ''Box Office 3D'' features a lot of badly written parodies of popular films from when it was released, failing at it in multiple directions. Some of the things that can be found in this film include a ''Twilight'' parody that assumes the franchise is about [[MonsterMash a bunch of classic movie monsters and horror movie characters fighting to get the same girl]] and a ''Harry Potter'' parody where the punchline is that the characters are NotAllowedToGrowUp and the movies will constantly come out [[DawsonCasting with the same, blatantly overaged actors]], neither of which are actually true (by the end of the latter series, the characters are in their final year of school).

* ''Film/BikiniBeach'': A bizarre example with "The Potato Bug." He's supposed to send up UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion — and resembles nothing so much as Creator/TerryThomas in a blond shag wig.

* ''Film/DarlingLili'' was an attempt by director Blake Edwards to deconstruct the typecasting surrounding Creator/JulieAndrews - who of course was famous for playing the MagicalNanny in both ''Film/MaryPoppins'' and ''Film/TheSoundOfMusic''. She plays Lili Smith - an entertainer in World War I with a reputation as a sweet EnglishRose...who's actually a FemmeFataleSpy. Despite touching on interesting issues, such as Lili's possible frustration at having to preserve the image of something she's not, it only mocks superficial aspects of the Julie Andrews persona - such as cloying songs and a good girl reputation. Both ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg-u5LiZ4qo Better With Bob?]]'' and ''[[https://paralleljulieverse.tumblr.com/post/128480326404/the-sound-of-julie-and-the-cinema-of-blake-edwards The Parallel Julieverse]]'' point out that both Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp were strong, active characters who inspired CharacterDevelopment in others and contributed to their plots - and for all their supposed corniness, both had a BittersweetEnding (Mary leaving the Banks children sadly, and the Von Trapp's having to escape the Nazis). Lili meanwhile ends up a passive DistressedDamsel who needs to be saved by all the men around her, and the deconstruction offers up no alternative, in favor of a straight happy ending. As one reviewer put it:

* ''Film/{{Airplane}}'' includes a parody of a famous scene from ''From Here to Eternity'' despite none of the writers having watched that film. According to the commentary, because the writers had never seen the film, they [[PopculturalOsmosis didn't even know they were parodying it]].

* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken to the extreme, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. [[note]]Kazakhstan is only barely in Eastern Europe. The country is almost entirely in Central Asia and native Kazakhs are clearly Asian, not European.[[/note]] Consequently, most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]]. [[JustifiedTrope The driving reason]] for this was that Creator/SachaBaronCohen, a British-born Jewish man of Palestinian and Belarusian descent who can speak Hebrew, can convincingly pass for an Eastern European man but would have no chance in hell of passing for a Central European Asian man, and Romania was as close to Central Europe as they could get without him sticking out like a sore thumb.

* ''{{Film/Maleficent}}'' - a live action retelling of Disney's ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' - deconstructs the TrueLovesKiss from the original, by having Philip say he can't kiss the unconscious Aurora. This is clearly responding to uncomfortable parallels people drew between the original and rape culture. Except, as a writer of ''[[https://www.themarysue.com/consent-sleeping-beauty/ The Mary Sue]]'' pointed out, comparing the climax of Sleeping Beauty to sexual assault is taking it out of context. Aurora is not just merely asleep or unconscious - she's been cursed with an enchanted sleep that she'll never wake from, and the kiss is the only thing that can save her. The kiss is not being done with malicious intent, as it's the only thing that will wake her from the enchanted sleep. Philip is also not some stranger who sees an unconscious girl and decides to kiss her; he's her fiance who she was in love with, and he was told he had to kiss her to break the curse. And that once Aurora wakes up, she very clearly doesn't have a problem with Philip kissing her.

* The Italian movie ''Box Office 3D'' features a lot of badly written parodies of popular films from when it was released, failing at it in multiple directions. Some of the things that can be found in this film include a ''Twilight'' parody that assumes the franchise is about [[MonsterMash a bunch of classic movie monsters and horror movie characters fighting to get the same girl]] and a ''Harry Potter'' parody where the punchline is that the characters are NotAllowedToGrowUp and the movies will constantly come out [[DawsonCasting with the same, blatantly overaged actors]], neither of which are actually true (by the end of the series the characters are in their final year of school).

* ''Film/BikiniBeach'': Avalon plays a [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion British invasion]] rocker/race car driver called "The Potato Bug" -- but rather than any sort of direct parody of Music/TheBeatles, the character is basically just Creator/TerryThomas in a blond shag wig.

* ''Film/BikiniBeach'': Avalon plays a [[UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion British invasion]] rocker/race car driver called "The Potato Bug" -- and resembles nothing so much as Creator/TerryThomas in a blond shag wig.

* ''Film/StarshipTroopers'': The film is an InNameOnly adaptation of [[Literature/StarshipTroopers the book]] to begin with, so this was inevitable. By his own admission, Creator/PaulVerhoeven only read part of the book and decided that it was endorsing Fascism (which it doesn't; as with all things concerting Creator/RobertAHeinlein, the views expressed in the book are much more complicated), causing the film to [[WindmillPolitical satirize political aspects of the book that it doesn't have]]. The Mobile Infantry are portrayed as a bunch of clueless CannonFodder in an effort to portray them [[FascistButInefficient realistically]], but the book's Mobile Infantry are a highly-trained group of EliteMooks who get badass PoweredArmor, [[YouNukeEm shoulder-mounted nukes]] and are deployed in {{Drop Pod}}s very unlike the film's dropships, and the book goes out of its way to describe how each and every one of them is a OneManArmy. The movie also makes it ambiguous to [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman how sentient the Bugs are]] and implies that HumansAreTheRealMonsters in order to contrast the book's supposed jingoism, even though [[RedundantParody the killing of nonhumans is something that Johnnie Rico grapples with in the book]]. Finally, the Federation is portrayed as a hyper-miltaristic nation in which citizenship can only be obtained through military service as a satire of the book's Federation, where citizenship can be obtained by doing multiple different kinds of public service, not just military-based.

* The parodies of Craig Moss are as reviled as Seltzer and Friedberg, if lesser-known (many didn't even hit theaters). Some even go the route of a LongTitle cramming in as many references as possible, thinking that's a joke by itself.

* One of ''many'' flaws in the Creator/SeltzerAndFriedberg "parody" films, such as ''Date Movie'', ''Epic Movie'', ''Meet the Spartans'', and the aptly named ''Disaster Movie''. In fact, ''Disaster Movie'' parodies films which were ''[[NarrowParody not released at the time the script was written]]'' (which would go on to become a theme in their next several movies). As a result, it includes parodies of films which [[BoxOfficeBomb flopped]] and were already forgotten by the time ''Disaster Movie'' made it to theaters.

** ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' notes that one "gag" from ''Epic Movie'' takes shallowness to its extreme by having a ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} {{Expy}} flip someone the bird with his claws, which had already been done with the real thing in ''Film/XMen1''. All they did was [[RedundantParody regurgitate a better joke from a better movie]].
** [[WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown Film Brain]] points out the shallowness of ''Epic Movie''[='s=] "parodies" during his review of the movie. Along with the aforementioned Wolverine bit, he found a scene that is stolen word-for-word from ''Film/{{Borat}}'', with only one bit of dialogue referencing the scene's location changed. This, like many of Seltzerberg's "jokes", doesn't really have a punchline and is more just a nod to something in passing. It led Buck to proclaim, "References ARE NOT JOKES!"

** ''[[Film/ThirtyDaysOfNight 30 Nights]] of Film/ParanormalActivity with Film/TheDevilInside [[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' and ''[[Literature/BreakingDawn Breaking Wind]]'' largely consist of pop culture references combined with out-and-out plagiarism of dialogue from these movies to pad out the run time. ''Breaking Wind'' is especially bizarre, as despite its title the film is a direct parody of ''Eclipse'', easily the part of the series least suited to parody. Anyone hoping for gags about falling in love with babies will be disappointed.

** ''[[Film/ThirtyDaysOfNight 30 Nights]] of Film/ParanormalActivity with Film/TheDevilInside [[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' and ''[[Literature/{{Twilight}} Breaking Wind]]'' largely consist of pop culture references combined with out-and-out plagiarism of dialogue from these movies to pad out the run time. ''Breaking Wind'' is especially bizarre, as despite its title the film is a direct parody of ''Eclipse'', easily the part of the series least suited to parody. Anyone hoping for gags about falling in love with babies will be disappointed.

* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken to the extreme, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. [[note]]Kazakhstan is only barely in Eastern Europe. The country is almost entirely in Central Asia and native Kazakhs are clearly Asian, not European.[[/note]] Consequently, most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]].

* The Italian movie ''Box Office 3D'' features a lot of badly written parodies of popular films from when it was released, failing at it in multiple directions. Some of the things that can be found in this film include a ''Twilight'' parody that assumes the franchise is about [[MonsterMash a bunch of classic movie monsters and horror movie characters fighting to get the same girl]] and a ''Harry Potter'' parody where the punchline is that the characters are NotAllowedToGrowUp and the movies will costantly come out [[DawsonCasting with the same, blatantly overaged actors]], neither of which are actually true.

** ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' notes that one "gag" from ''Epic Movie'' takes shallowness to its extreme by having a ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} {{Expy}} flip someone the bird with his claws, which had already been done with the real thing in ''Film/XMen1''. All they did was [[RedundantParody regurgitate better joke from a better movie]].

* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken UpToEleven, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. [[note]] Kazakhstan is only barely in Eastern Europe. The country is almost entirely in Central Asia and native Kazakhs are clearly Asian, not European.[[/note]] Consequently most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]].

* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken UpToEleven, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. [[note]] Kazakhstan is not even an Eastern European country to begin with. It's in East Asia.[[/note]] Consequently most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]].

* The scenes of Kazakhstan in ''Film/{{Borat}}'' were all fairly generic developing nation stereotypes given a vaguely Eastern European tone and taken UpToEleven, meaning they barely managed to represent what Kazakhstan was actually like in the first place. Consequently most of Europe was offended, Romania (where the scenes were filmed) was ''outraged'', and the [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Kazakhs thought it was funny as hell]].

* ''Film/BlackChristmas2019'' contains a TakeThat to ''Film/MeanGirls'' precisely because director Sophia Takal considers it "misogynistic" - as it pits the girl against each other. Except that while ''Mean Girls'' focuses on the rivalry within a GirlPosse, it deconstructs the CycleOfRevenge and its message is that girl on girl bullying and backstabbing is wrong. One of the movie's defining lines is "You have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores; it just makes it easier for ''guys'' to call you sluts and whores."

* ''Thumb Wars'', a parody of ''Film/StarWars'', ends with the Obi-Wan analogue giving the Luke analogue advice as he prepares to destroy the Death Star - not to use the Force or "reach out with his feelings", but to use his targeting computer, because that's what it was designed to do. In the original film, Obi-Wan didn't instruct Luke to use the Force out of some sense of Jedi dogma, as the parody seems to think; the movie took pains to show that Red Leader, a veteran pilot, had tried to make the shot and failed, even with the aid of his targeting computer. The shot was impossible to make with technology and skill alone; a major theme of the Original Trilogy is Luke learning to trust that the Force can achieve things that are otherwise impossible.

* The script of ''Film/TheSlumberPartyMassacre'' was written by an angry feminist activist as a DeconstructiveParody / TakeThat directed at slasher horror movies... but the parody was so [[OutsideJoke shallow and clueless]] that the (female) director [[TookTheBadFilmSeriously thought it was a straight example of the genre and filmed it as such]]. The script itself is [[PoesLaw functionally identical to all the slasher movies that it was ostensibly meant to mock]], with most of the humor being based on subversions of [[DeadUnicornTrope tropes and conventions that were never a thing to begin with]]. For instance, having the female leads be [[HardDrinkingPartyGirl horny party girls]] instead of virginal Mary Sues, or the male characters being [[MenAreTheExpendableGender helpless and expendable]] instead of macho action heroes; anybody who's ever seen a single horror movie could tell you that's how it usually is.

* The script of ''Film/TheSlumberPartyMassacre'' was written by an angry feminist activist as a DeconstructiveParody / TakeThat directed at slasher horror movies... but the parody was so [[OutsideJoke shallow and clueless]] that the (female) director [[TookTheBadFilmSeriously thought it was a straight example of the genre and filmed it as such]]. The script itself is [[PoesLaw functionally identical to all the slasher movies that it was ostensibly meant to mock]], with most of the humor being based on subversions of [[DeadUnicornTrope tropes and conventions that were never a thing to begin with]]. For instance, having the female leads be [[HardDrinkingPartyGirl horny party girls]] instead of virginal [[PuritySue Purity Sues]] or the male characters being [[MenAreTheExpendableGender helpless and expendable]] instead of macho action heroes; anybody who's ever seen a single horror movie could tell you that's how it usually is.

* Creator/DougWalker felt ''{{Film/Enchanted}}'' fell into this at a lot of times, especially in its attempt to deconstruct Disney's habit of LoveAtFirstSight - since such a thing only happened in the Disney films of the 30s and 50s, and the Renaissance films featured characters having proper romance arcs where they got to know each other (the closest to LoveAtFirstSight, [[WesternAnimation/TheLittleMermaid1989 Ariel and Eric]], still had a TimeSkip to their wedding). Likewise Queen Nerissa expresses surprise at Giselle being the one to save Robert, when the likes of Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Pocahontas were active characters who saved their love interests at various points of the movie.
* ''Film/{{Spaceballs}}'' was accused of being this by critics when first released in 1987, although most fans today say otherwise. Indeed, most would agree the film averts this; for example, Princess Vespa initially seems more like a parody of fictional princesses in general than of Leia in particular, at least until her CharacterDevelopment after the hairdryer scene. Creator/MelBrooks himself commented on this trope via this film, saying that it's too easy to make fun of bad things and you should "only mock what you love."
* One of many, '''''many''''' flaws in the Creator/SeltzerAndFriedberg "parody" films, such as ''Date Movie'', ''Epic Movie'', ''Meet the Spartans'', and the aptly named ''Disaster Movie''. In fact, ''Disaster Movie'' parodies films which were ''[[NarrowParody not released at the time the script was written]]'' (which would go on to become a theme in their next several movies). As a result, it includes parodies of films which [[BoxOfficeBomb flopped]] and were already forgotten by the time ''Disaster Movie'' made it to theaters.

** ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' notes that one "gag" from ''Epic Movie'' takes shallowness to its extreme by having a ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} {{Expy}} flip someone the bird with his claws, which had already been done with the real thing in ''Film/XMen1''. It's literally just [[RedundantParody regurgitating a better joke from a better movie]].
** [[WebVideo/BadMovieBeatdown Film Brain]] likewise points this out during his review of the movie. Along with the aforementioned Wolverine bit, he found a scene that is stolen word-for-word from ''Film/{{Borat}}'', with only one bit of dialogue referencing the scene's location changed. This, like many of Seltzerberg's "jokes", didn't really have a punchline and was more just a nod to something in passing. It led Buck to proclaim, "References ARE NOT JOKES!"

** ''[[Film/ThirtyDaysOfNight 30 Nights]] of Film/ParanormalActivity with Film/TheDevilInside [[Literature/TheMillenniumTrilogy the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' and ''[[Literature/{{Twilight}} Breaking Wind]]'', like the above example, largely consist of pop culture references combined with out-and-out plagiarism of dialogue from these movies to pad out the run time. ''Breaking Wind'' is especially bizarre, as despite its title the film is a direct parody of ''Eclipse'', easily the part of the series least suited to parody. Anyone hoping for gags about falling in love with babies will be disappointed.
* Somewhat more excusable example: ''Film/{{Airplane}}'' includes a parody of a famous scene from ''From Here to Eternity'' despite none of the writers having watched that film. Mind you, that's ''one'' parody in a film which includes many more. (The majority of the film is a direct parody of ''Zero Hour!'') According to the commentary, because the writers had never seen the film, they [[PopculturalOsmosis didn't even know they were parodying it]].
* A bizarre example in the Frankie Avalon[=/=]Annette Funicello beach movie ''Film/BikiniBeach'': Avalon plays a British invasion rocker/race car driver called "The Potato Bug" to send up UsefulNotes/TheBritishInvasion -- and resembles nothing so much as Creator/TerryThomas in a blond shag wig.
* ''Film/MurderByDeath'', being a parody of famous fictional detectives, has this happen with some of its parodies:

* ''{{Film/Maleficent}}'' - a live action retelling of Disney's ''WesternAnimation/SleepingBeauty'' - deconstructs the TrueLovesKiss from the original, by having Philip say he can't kiss the unconscious Aurora. This is clearly responding to uncomfortable parallels people drew between the original and rape culture. Except, as a writer of ''[[https://www.themarysue.com/consent-sleeping-beauty/ The Mary Sue]]'' pointed out, comparing the climax of Sleeping Beauty to sexual assault is taking it out of context. Aurora is not just merely asleep or unconscious - she's literally cursed in an enchanted sleep that she'll never wake from, and the kiss is the only thing that can save her. The kiss is not being done with malicious intent, as it's the only thing that will wake her from the enchanted sleep. Philip is also not some stranger who sees an unconscious girl and decides to kiss her; he's her fiance who she was in love with, and he was told he had to kiss her to break the curse. And that once Aurora wakes up, she very clearly doesn't have a problem with Philip kissing her.

* [[WebVideo/VampireReviews Maven of the Eventide]] felt ''Film/DraculaDeadAndLovingIt'' was this to the Dracula mythos - since it makes fun of Lucy's status as the 'slutty best friend', and that detail was [[AdaptationDisplacement from the more recent]] ''Film/BramStokersDracula'' (which, despite the title, was hardly a faithful adaptation). It also goes for the obvious parody of BritishStuffiness, which is pretty ironic in light of how the Hollywood adaptations of the book were far more sanitized.

* In a similar form as the Setzer and Friedberg films, the Italian movie ''Box Office 3D'' features a lot of badly written parodies of popular films of that period, failing at it in multiple directions. Some of the things that can be found in this film include a ''Twilight'' parody that assumes the franchise is about [[MonsterMash a bunch of classic movie monsters and horror movie characters fighting to get the same girl]] and a ''Harry Potter'' parody where the punchline is that the characters are NotAllowedToGrowUp and the movies will costantly come out [[DawsonCasting with the same, blatantly overaged actors]], neither of which are actually true.

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