Happy Friday everyone! I’m a bit late to the TMP party but I love this week’s topic that I still want to participate. The Thursday Movie Picks blogathon was spearheaded by Wandering Through the Shelves Blog.

The rules are simple simple: Each week there is a topic for you to create a list of three movies. Your picks can either be favourites/best, worst, hidden gems, or if you’re up to it one of each. This Thursday’s theme is… Spoofs / Satires / Mockumentaries.

For this particular post, I’m going to select one movie each from each category:

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

A spoof of Robin Hood in general, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) in particular.

It’s been ages since I saw this movie but I remember laughing SO hard in the theater watching this with my brother that my tummy hurt! Mel Brooks is obviously a comedic genius, he must saw the unintentionally-hilarious Prince of Thieves and knew he had to spoof it! Cary Elwes is absolutely perfect for the role of Robin, plus a fabulous ensemble including Patrick Stewart, Tracey Ullman, and Richard Lewis. Apparently Elwes based his performance in Princes Bride after Errol Flynn, and here he’s channeling him as Robin as well.

The musical numbers are a lot of fun as well, though some of the actors didn’t actually do their own singing. Relentlessly irreverent and consistently hysterical, it’s definitely a comedic classic that can be watched over and over. To this day, it’s still hard not to laugh watching the oh-so-serious and grim Robin Hood (*cough* Ridley Scott *cough*) after watching this one.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

An insane general triggers a path to nuclear holocaust that a War Room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.

I actually saw this movie in a film class in college and at the time I didn’t really get the significance of this movie. Upon rewatch, I realized just the brilliance of this cold war satire, and I read how Stanley Kubrick originally set out to make a serous drama before he realized the misguided patriotism of the characters. Filled with many quotable lines, especially “this is the War Room” line delivered with deadpan by the great Peter Sellers. Satire, when done well, can deliver the most potent social commentary, and this is definitely one of the best. No wonder it was shown in a film class as it’s a text-book example of how to do this genre brilliantly. It certainly takes guts, skill and enormous amount of wit to be able to do one, as Taika Waititi recently did with JoJo Rabbit.

What We Do In The Shadows (2014)

Viago, Deacon and Vladislav are vampires who are finding that modern life has them struggling with the mundane – like paying rent, keeping up with the chore wheel, trying to get into nightclubs and overcoming flatmate conflicts.

The tagline of this movie is ‘some interviews with some vampires’ I LOVE that!! It’s the quintessential mockumentary that takes a brilliant concept and executed it smashingly (check out my full review). Written by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, this movie is SO freaking witty, hilarious and fun! It’s the first time I discovered Taika (as I knew Jemaine already from Flight of the Conchords) and he’s such a gifted writer/filmmaker so I’m glad he’s found success in Hollywood now.

Every single one of the cast is hilarious, even Stu who had never acted before and thought he was hired to help with computer work as he’s actually a business analyst, but he ended up playing himself in the movie which was simply genius!! This is perhaps one of the most quotable movies I’ve ever seen, I still quote a bunch of the lines like ‘Wakey, wakey,’ ‘We’re Werewolves, not Swear-Wolves’ and my personal favorite ‘I go for a look which I call dead but delicious’ 😀 I own the Bluray and I cannot wait for the sequel (with the original cast). I watched season one of the series, which was funny, but still can’t hold a candle to this movie!

What do you think of my picks? Have you seen any of them?

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