Film / Not Another Teen Movie

"If you liked Scary Movie, who gives a shit?!"

"You also put the 'brat' in 'bratwurst'. And the 'eww' in 'jiu-jitsu'. And the 'ism' in 'This is all just a defense mechanism'!"

Not Another Teen Movie is a 2001 Affectionate Parody teen film directed by Joel Gallen and written by Mike Bender, Adam Jay Epstein, Andrew Jacobson, Phil Beauman, and Buddy Johnson, which essentially strove to do to High School movies what Scary Movie did for horror.

While the basic plot of the film was taken from She's All That, it also lifts from dozens of other films, from the more immediate references to Varsity Blues, 10 Things I Hate About You, Can't Hardly Wait and Pretty in Pink to the additional allusions to '80s and '90s teen/college films including American Pie, Bring It On, Cruel Intentions, American Beauty, Never Been Kissed, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and The Breakfast Club (an actor even directly reprises his role from the lattermost film!).

The film also boasts an All-Star Cast including Chris Evans in his film debut.

---

This film provides examples of:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Paul Gleason reprises his role of Richard Vernon of The Breakfast Club.
  • Also Lacey Chabert playing a parody of Jennifer Love Hewitt's character in Can't Hardly Wait. Chabert and Hewitt both starred on Party of Five.
  • The commentator at the football game praises Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Melissa Joan Hart in the scene after she made her cameo. Hart also was in Can't Hardly Wait.
  • Ron Lester, who basically plays the exact same character he was in Varsity Blues (like Gleason above). They even have a running countdown of how many concussions he has left to go before the movie ends, in reference to his Blues character's arc, which was about him being nearly killed from having too many concussions.
  • Jake's father is also the father of Ferris Bueller.
  • Molly Ringwald as the Flight Attendant. Her lines are coated in irony, at one time even saying "Fucking teenagers" and scoffing. At one point she identifies a Pretty in Pink quote, to which Janey asks "Are you sure?" and Ringwald replies "Trust me".
  • "The Slow Clap Guy" was played by the same actor who played Bogey in 10 Things I Hate About You.
  • "The Other Token Black Guy" is played by Sean Patrick Thomas; Thomas appeared in Can't Hardly Wait, Cruel Intentions, and Save the Last Dance.
• Advice Backfire: Every bit of advice Catherine gives Jake to manipulate Janey is accompanied by a Gilligan Cut of him following that advice... badly.
  • First is to gain her trust, which he does by defending her brother... who accidentally hits Jake in the confusion, prompting Jake to give him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, which gets the bullies he was previously fighting with to pull Jake off.
  • Second, she tells him to pick a song with her name in it - he chooses "Janey's Got a Gun", which gets security to taze her by interpreting the lyrics literally.^note Not to mention that the name of the girl in the original song is spelled Janie.
  • And third, she advises him to put the icing on the cake... cue the whipped-cream bikini mentioned below.
• Affectionate Parody
• Air-Vent Passageway: Used to spy on the girls' locker room, complete with directional sign and warning of "Maximum Capacity: 2 Adolescent Boys"
• And This Is for...: Jake does this a few times.
  (To Austin) This is for taking Janey to prom!
  (To Priscilla) This is for hurting Janey at Preston's party!
  (To Priscilla's weird-ass boyfriend) This is for being really weird!
  (To her weird-ass boyfriend's bag.) ... I'm not sure what that was for.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the IMDB parental guide, stuck in the middle of descriptions of nudity, fetishes, masturbation, etc. there's a line "contains sexual innuendo."
• Artistic License – Engineering: The architecture of the school is a bit unusual. The girl's changing room and toilets are on the same floor as the basketball court, but there's at least one classroom beneath it. Unless the court has some very high foundations, this means that someone had the potentially life-threatening idea to put an arena-size room above several classrooms.
• Awkward Poetry Reading: There's a joke about Janey's Stalker with a Crush Ricky writing a creepy love poem, where he confesses to stealing her hair, and reciting it in front of the class. It ends with him in tears and the class (bar Janey, who remains oblivious) thoroughly disturbed. This isn't the first time he did this as one student says, "Not again" after hearing that the poem was about Janey. Even the teacher was reluctant to call on Ricky, only doing when it was clear none of the other students wanted to recite a poem.
• Bait-and-Switch Comment: Occurs near the end of Prom.
  Catherine: And for once... I wish a guy would take a dump on my chest.
  Ox: That is appalling! That really upsets me! I can't believe nobody's ever taken a dump on your chest!
  • And before this, Mitch hands Amanda Becker his love note, and she calls him out on it.
    Amanda: I don't screw every pathetic guy that gives me a letter! I give them handjobs.
  • Another when Janey is discussing how her mother died after going out to buy her a birthday present she really wanted.
    Janey: It was raining really hard that night...the roads were slippery...
    Jake: My god, Janey, a car accident?
    Janey: No. Cancer.
• Big Game: Parodied, of course.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Jake's family: his dad wants him to go to the same college that he did and have the same job he had, his mom is willing to sleep with him to complete the illusion, and his sister is endlessly trying to have sex with him. At first, it seems as though they are spoofing Cruel Intentions and that they are Not Blood Siblings until she affirms "only [related] by blood".
  Jake: What is wrong with this family?
• Bowdlerise: The network TV version turns the "fuck my brother" line from "Prom Tonight" into "find a lover."
• Brick Joke:
  • The conjoined twins really do make up one decent chick... they wind up becoming Prom Queens.
  • The albino hippy at the start of the movie appears after the credits, this time mentioning that her retinas have burned out and she needs help... in song.
    Extra: (Whispered) Quick, grab her guitar!
  • During the film The Breakfast Club, a piece of pimento loaf is tossed onto a statue. This movie's parody of that movie is filmed in the same library and starts with said piece of pimento loaf finally falling off of the statue.
• Bring It: "Oh, it's already been brought-en!"
• Brother–Sister Incest:
  • Parodying the Flirty Stepsiblings from Cruel Intentions, Catherine makes a determined effort to try to sleep with her biological brother ("Only by blood." is her rationalization when he points out the consanguinity). The brother is appropriately grossed out and never goes along with her intentions.
  Catherine: So what if we have the same mother?/Tonight I'm gonna fuck my brother!
  • Not to mention Janey's admission that after her mother died, she had to take over a lot of her responsibilities: "Cooking, cleaning, breastfeeding Mitch."
• The Cameo: Molly Ringwald, Melissa Joan Hart, Sean Patrick Thomas. Joan Hart's can be seen as a parody of Sarah Michelle Gellar's cameo in She's All That.
• Chekhov's Gunman: A pair of twins conjoined at the temple. They become prom queen at the end.
• Clique Tour: Parodied. The freshman orientation guide tells the students that there are no cliques or exclusive groups at the school, then immediately separates his tour group by stereotypes and tells them that those people will be their only friends for the next 4 years.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Combined with Advice Backfire and Nice Job Breaking It, Hero. Jake's sister Catherine advises him that if he wants to get Janey's attention he must sing a song with her name in it. While Janey is taking an outdoor art class, Jake commandeers the school's PA system and sings 'Janey's Got A Gun'. One of the other students points a finger at her and shouts "She's got a gun!" Everyone except Janey screams and runs off, and the police converge on her; panicking, she runs, is wrestled to the ground by two cops and gratuitously tasered into insensibility.
  • Later, their coach is fixated on whether or not Reggie-Ray can play - despite the trainer telling him the guy is comatose from the hit.
• Composite Character:
  • Most of the characters are basically the characters from She's All That combined with another teen film character (ex. Janey's dad is both the dad from She's All That and Pretty in Pink, Jake's sister is Mac Silar combined with Kathryn from Cruel Intentions, Ricky is Jesse from She's All That with Ducky from Pretty in Pink etc).
  • Not to mention that Ox pretty much plays an exaggerated version of his character from Detroit Rock City.
• Contrived Clumsiness: Parodied. Janey is already wet from jumping into the pool when Priscilla, sarcastically feigning clumsiness, spills a bottle of water on her. Janey reacts with humiliated tears.
  Random Party-Goer: That's gonna stain!
• Covered in Gunge: This happens to Janey and everyone else in the opening scene, as the result of a catastrophic encounter between her vibrator and her birthday cake. It happens again, turned up to eleven, with the scene with the Dainty Girl on the toilet.
• Crowd Song: The one before prom. Lampshaded immediately afterward: the participants look at each other and leave awkwardly.
• Deconstructive Parody: While the entire movie serves as this to some degree, the scenes with Molly Ringwald take the cake.
  Molly Ringwald: Let me give you a little piece of advice here, Jake. Why don't you lose the "I'm the cute and sensitive popular boy with the big sideburns" routine? It's just too pathetic. And for once tell Janey what's true in your heart. Stop being such a little bitch! ...Oh, and you, Janey, little miss "other side of the tracks awkward rebel-girl with the pseudo-intellectual glasses." Why don't you wise up to Jake's bullshit, and stop being such a dumbass?
  • Unfortunately, both of them take her advice, with Jake laying flat-out the realistic results from such a scenario, and Janey chalks it up to a speech from The Karate Kid (1984).
  • Jake's throw during the big game goes wildly off-target, as he hadn't even been given practice time since Marty's death. For bonus points, he winds up beaning Reggie-Ray, taking out his last concussion.
  Announcer: That has to be the worst pass I've ever seen - ever.
  • After the big musical numbers, the music cuts out... and they're still in the same pose, as the scene didn't dissolve into another, so they hold it until it finally cuts.
• Depraved Bisexual: Catherine, ranging from May–December Romance to Brother–Sister Incest. She's implied to have slept with everyone in school, is willing to sleep with any hot stranger she hasn't slept with yet, attempts to seduce her own brother and his love interest Janey and then french kisses a woman old enough to be her grandmother.
• Disney Creatures of the Farce:
  • During the "Prom Tonight" sequence, a nude Areola sings out her window while Disney-style cartoon birds appear and sing with her.
  Look at me, my breasts are perky, yes?
  • The birds are, of course, blue tits.
  • May count as a Shout-Out to Grease, the birds are nearly identical to the ones Sandy interacts with during the cartoon opening credits.
• Droste Image: When Jake first looks at his own headshot while entering school, then walks by a second picture featuring himself looking at its own headshot as it happened a few seconds ago.
• Drunk on Milk: Janey gets drunk on non-alcoholic beer at the Wild Teen Party.
• Establishing Character Music: Every Amanda Becker's arrival scenes are always accompanied by the opening of "Can't Fight This Feeling" by REO Speedwagon.
• Engineered Public Confession: Austin manages to get Jake to out himself in regards to the bet by making it look like he was about to tell Janey through a Silent Whisper.
• Expy: Aside from the Stock Characters already mentioned, Ox is a blatant Expy of Oz, what with only being a single letter off on the name, and having the same attitude towards sex and love that Oz ended the first movie with.
• Fan Disservice:
  • Lampshaded with the "Dainty Girl", in a Shout-Out to the bathroom scene in Detroit Rock City (except with an unending stream of poo). As an added bonus, an Mr. Keller is heard berating today's youth for their crude taste in humor, right before the ceiling collapses and showers him in the girl's excrement.
    "That kind of make me sad in pants."
  • The scene of Jake's sister, Catherine, frenching with an old woman. Even an elderly woman who finds Mia Kirshner attractive would find the ridiculously long strings of saliva between their lips more redolent of the slime in a horror movie.
• Floorboard Failure: Janey's slow-motion entrance down the stairs of her home is somewhat undermined by this, compounded by the stair carpet, landing table, stair rods and sundry stairs and other bits of the house falling on top of her.
  Janey: I'm Okay!.
• Follow in My Footsteps:
  • Jake's dad has Jake's life plotted out to the last detail, reflecting everything he'd done right down to introducing him to a great woman to start dating and eventually marry - meaning Jake's mother.
  • Later, Janey sees "Dad's Wall of Jake's Accomplishments", which includes a picture of Jake's Princeton Graduation... with a cut-out of Jake's face sloppily pasted over his own.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Several, such as silly posters in the school and the departure board at the airport, showing Green Air 066 to Tokyo, Tokyo Air 1067 to Greenland, Equator Air 3742 to Equator, Jersey Air 009 to Florham Park, and Foreign Air 2300 to Europe.
  • At the Big Game, one of the North Compton Wildcats' uniforms reads "Very Tight End", and one of the Wasps is "Extra".
• Funny Background Event: While Mitch, Ox, and Bruce discuss the challenges of getting laid, we hear the announcement "The sex club is meeting after school today" over the intercom and see a bare-assed girl having sex against a window.
• Gag Echo: Jake says "See you in English" to Janey, infuriating Ricky in the process.
• Genre Savvy: Several characters in the film are very aware of teen comedy conventions, explicitly commenting on them as they occur. Jake and Ricky even try to one-up each other in their competition over Janey by citing the advantages their respective roles have.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Subverted in the scene where Catherine frenches an old woman, which is made repulsive. Also subverted in Janey's "transformation", when Catherine looks about to kiss her, then about to go down on her.
• Glasses-and-Ponytail Coverup: Parodied, obviously, with Janey Briggs being the most unattractive girl ever for having glasses and a ponytail, with everyone reacting appalled. When her date's sister pseudo-erotically removes them, everyone reacts as if she has become the most attractive girl in the world, and asking who she is at prom.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: This plus taking her hair out of a ponytail is all Janey needs to be revealed as Beautiful All Along.
• High School: John Hughes High School, in fact. The bulletin board out front reads: "Monday - Orientation", "Wednesday - Preston's Party", "Friday - Homecoming Game", "Saturday - Prom".
• Hollywood Tourette's: "Give me a 'W'. Give me a 'Y'. Give me a - lick-my-pussy, ass cock shit." Beat, and then the audience at the football game actually shouts it back.
• Just Friends: Janey doesn't even bother to tell Ricky she just likes him as a friend, as she's Oblivious to Love.
• Lampshade Hanging: Especially in the advertising. They told you what kind of movie this was going to be and exactly which Stock Characters they were going to be using.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: All over the place again. For example, Janey and Ricky are both shown reading books on how to woo particular character types.
• Love Overrides the Law: In the climactic chase, drivers let the Love Interest run through traffic, but do their utmost to stall the Romantic False Lead doing the same thing. For bonus points, they're yelling stuff like "Give up!" and "She doesn't love you!" at the latter.
• Major Injury Underreaction: Marty. At least he got to go out a hero.
• Manipulative Bastard: Austin, when he gets Jake to confess to making a bet over Janey using a pointlessly sneaky ruse. The next day, it's revealed that he managed to convince Janey to be his prom date despite his obvious jerkass attitude.
• Meta Guy: Most everyone, but the two most consistently aware of the genre conventions are Malik and the unnamed tour guide played by a pre-How I Met Your Mother Josh Radnor: "Who would have guessed this school was filled with professional dancers?"
• Missing Mom: Janey's mom died of cancer when she was young. After this she had to step up and do things her mom formerly did, including breastfeed her little brother.
• Mixtape of Love: Ricky tries to declare his love to Janie with a mixtape. Janie, oblivious, puts it in a stack with the many other mixtapes he's given her.
• Mood Whiplash: After Jake reaches the airport...
  TSA Agent (After Jake trips the metal detector) ...ah, hell, just go! (Woman trips it) Freeze, bitch!
• Mr. Fanservice: Captain America wearing a Whipped Cream Bikini? This film's got you covered.
  Janey: I don't like sundaes.
  Jake: Oh, it's not a sundae - it's a banana split.
• Ms. Fanservice: Areola, the ever-naked foreign exchange student. Her subtitles even intentionally don't block her breasts.
• On the Rebound: Parodied. After Jake breaks up with Priscilla, his dad (who wants his son to emulate him in every way) approaches him with the "perfect rebound girl", which turns out to be his willing mother. No wonder Jake considers himself the Only Sane Man in the family.
• Poor Man's Porn: Janey uses the movie She's All That as a masturbatory aid.
• Pose of Silence: Jake admits to the bet of turning Janey into the prom queen when Austin leans into Janey and whispers, "Jake is going to admit betting on you" into her ear.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: Bruce, a white kid who thinks he is Asian. A parody of (or possibly simply Homage to) Seth Green's character in Can't Hardly Wait, who was white but thought he was black. At one point a couple of white boys mocked Bruce for this, even though they themselves thought they were black. It's also probable he's a race-flipped parody of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles - i.e. an Asian and Nerdy immigrant who is trying way too hard to be American.
• Pygmalion Plot: The plot of the movie is a parody and high school version of this trope. Jake is challenged to turn Janey into the prom queen but ends up falling in love with her.
• Quest for Sex: Parodied to hell and back with Mitch, Ox, and Bruce, who all pledge to get laid by prom - despite being freshmen.
• Race for Your Love: A rare competitive version, with Ricky vs. Jake.
  Ricky: Yes, but but I'm the best friend and I have been in front of her face the whole time. She just— she hasn't really realized it yet, but she will.
  Jake: Well, I'm the reformed cool guy who's learned the error of his ways. She's gonna forgive me for my mistakes and realize that I really love her.
  Ricky: ...Damn it! That's true.
• R-Rated Opening: The opening scene of the movie involves Janey attempting to use a really huge vibrator. But then her dad and brother burst in just as she begins using it, because it's her birthday and they want to give her cake. Then her grandparents come in, and her priest, and a bunch of kids from the community center where she volunteers. Then her dog starts investigating why there's a humming sound coming from between her legs, and her efforts to hide it under the sheets are confounded her not being able to turn it off while it's still thrust between her legs and stimulating her, on top of which her family thinks that her increasingly dazed moans are because she's ill, and the resulting tug-of-war with the sheets cause said vibrator to fly into the air and land in her birthday cake, which splashes thick white cake frosting all over the room but especially all over Janey's face.
• Scenery Censor: Done with Areola's crotch, although not with any other part of her body.
• Serenade Your Lover: In a parody of 10 Things I Hate About You. Jake realizes that singing "Janie's Got a Gun" while at school was probably not the smartest thing to do.
• Shaking the Rump: A portion of the parody of Bring It On has the (white) cheerleaders doing this:
  We're black, we know it, we shake our big booties and show it, we ain't white, we ain't white, we definitely ain't white. Break it down niggas!
• Shaped Like Itself: A banner at the big game reads "Put the Cheerleader in Cheerleader!"
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Played for Laughs (or course!) with Janey's dad, who was in 'Nam. He sings about being The Alcoholic since then for coping with it. He's later seen having an imaginary battle with Vietnamese Communists in his house.
• Shout-Out:
  • John Hughes High School and Anthony Michael Dining Hall.
  • Marty's name being chanted is a blatant one to Rudy
  • A cover of "Somebody's Baby" appears on the soundtrack.
  • Jake pulls up to LAX and hears announcements about which zone is for parking and which is for unloading.
  • During the detention scene in the library, one of the subject area signs on the wall is for Weird Science.
  • Jake's flashback to Marty's death is a parody of Rudy.
• Silent Whisper: Austin whispers into Janey's ear, causing Jake to launch into a hysterical confession. Austin then explains to Jake that what he actually whispered into Janey's ear was that Jake was about to launch into a hysterical confession, thus reaffirming everything he just whispered into her ear.
• Slapstick: Janey is the brunt of a lot of comedic violence, and even Priscilla gets punched in the face by Jake (who also knocks out Austin and her weird boyfriend with a video-camera), but poor Ricky gets the worst of it, being hit multiple times, even by a bus toward the end, with his last shot being getting beaten up.
• Slow Clap: An extra exists whose sole purpose is to learn how to do this properly.
  Melissa Joan Hart: Look, you can't just start a Slow Clap at any old time. You gotta wait for the right moment.
  Guy: But... how do I know when it's the right moment?
  Melissa: Oh... you'll know.
  • He finally spots the right moment after the Race for Your Love sequence... and gets beaten to the punch by Ricky, earning the latter a(nother) beating.
• The Song Before the Storm: "Prom Tonight" is a parody of this.
• Specific Situation Books: Ricky (the Unlucky Childhood Friend) reads a book called How to Get the Uniquely Rebellious Girl Who's In Love with The Popular Boy.
• Spit-Trail Kiss: Between Jake's sister and an elderly woman pretending to be a teenager at the Wild Teen Party. Probably one of the grossest ones ever recorded on film.
• Spontaneous Choreography: After Jake confesses to Janey about the bet, we're treated to an extended musical number with every main character in "Prom Tonight". The dance at the prom itself is the current page quote.
• Stalker Shrine: Jesse is shown to have one of Janey in the extended version of "Prom Tonight".
• The Stinger: The albino guitarist appears again after the credits have rolled and sings about the fact that she is now completely blind. A guy is heard planning to steal her guitar.
• Stock Character: This movie goes out of its way to include as many as possible, usually directly referencing the more famous examples from this genre. Lots of lampshading too.
• Toilet Humor:
  • Catherine, in her very first scene, just has to tell Jake that guys she's with like to have anal sex, then she shits on their chests. He didn't ask to be told any of that.
  • The scene with the girl on the toilet naturally, who's comically loud while shitting and farting, then falls through the floor, with the contents spraying right on a teacher below her.
• Token Minority: Hilariously and endlessly Lampshaded.
  Malik: I am the token black guy. I'm just supposed to smile and stay out of the conversation and say things like: "Damn," "Shit," and "That is WACK!"''
  • Also "I'm only in this song cause I'm a black guy".
  • This is what happens when another Token Minority shows up to the party.
  • At the start of his Race for Your Love, Jake realizes that Malik is greatly under-appreciated as a character - but has to cut short their conversation to get to the airport.
• Too Much Information: Jake says this after Catherine tells him how the guys she sleeps with mostly want to do anal, then she shits on their chests.
• Unexplained Recovery: Austin is carted out of the big game on a gurney with a broken leg, but then goes to prom the next night with no sign of it.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Areola being naked seems to go largely unnoticed. A sign in the principal's office says that the dress code is strictly enforced yet the principal doesn't have a problem with her being naked (and seems to see her as just another student), Janey seems a little weirded out without mentioning the nudity (but seems to have gotten used to it by the deleted scene where she's showing her to class, instead being confused by her accent changing), and another naked woman at a party complains that she wore the same outfit, but that's about it.
• Vertigo Effect: Jake has this effect applied to him after he gets fooled by Austin into revealing their bet to Janey.
• Video Credits: At the beginning of the Closing Credits, a short clip of each of the major characters is shown and caption shows the actor's name. The clips are from scenes earlier in the film. Played with in that they freeze frame them with very unflattering images of each (except Aereola).
• The Wildcats: The school's sports teams are called the Wasps, a pun on their whiteness that comes up when the cheerleading squad is competing against their rivals from a mostly Black school.
• Wild Teen Party: Parodied. They begin setting up the party as the parents are leaving.
  Preston's Mother: [Preston's parents are just heading out for the weekend] Now Preston, I left some money on the kitchen counter. Oh and the emergency numbers are by the phone.
  Preston's Father: And remember son, no parties.
  Keg Guy: [Two guys walk by carrying a beer keg] Keg comin' through! Hey Preston.
  Preston: What's up, man?
  Preston's Father: We're really trusting you here, Preston.
  Roadie: [Behind them two more guys roll in a huge set of speakers] Where do you want these speakers set up, Preston?
  Preston: Yeah, just move all the shit in the dining room.
  [to his parents]
  Preston: Well, you guys really should hit the road, huh? Because I'm about to take your antique Ferrari to the inner-city to buy some hookers.
  Preston's Mother: Well, alright, sweetie. We'll call you later to check in.
  Preston: Oh, mom. By that point I'll be so high I won't even know where the phone is.
  Preston's Mother: Haha! That's my boy.

---