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Indecisive Parody: Difference between revisions
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* ''[[Condorman]]'' is an extraordinarily [[Camp|campy]] Disney live-action spy flick, but it's so absurd and occasionally self-aware at times that it's hard not to see parody.
* ''[[Enchanted]]'' has elements of both, thus this trope. While it mocks a lot of the tropes of fairy tales and shows how ridiculous they would be in real life, it also has a happy fairy-tale ending and suggests that life would be better if people did live more by fairy tale ideals of kindness and trust. The only way that a relationship between Giselle and Robert can work is for her to become less of a fairy-tale true-believer (and give up the perfect prince) and him to become more of one (allow himself to love someone again).
* ''[[Feast]]'' , a survival horror film starts as an obvious parody of such films, wherein the characters are simply named after their archetypes. However, despite the occasional sex joke, it creates some truly frightening monsters and horrific death scenes. By the end of the movie, no-one's laughing.
* ''[[Friday the 13th (film)|Friday the 13 th]] Part VI: Jason Lives'' was part self-parody, part serious slasher.
* The ''[[Get Smart (film)|Get Smart]]'' remake movie was criticised by some reviewers for attempting to both parody spy action movies whilst at the same time attempting to be a straight spy action movie. The original was like this as well, though not quite as blatant about it.
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* ''[[Lake Placid]]'' took a lot of heat from critics who didn't realize it was ''supposed'' to be funny. As though a [[Cluster F-Bomb]] from [[Betty White]] could be anything else.
* ''[[Last Action Hero]]'' tried to split the difference between [[Lampshade Hanging]] mockery of action movie cliches and [[Affectionate Parody]] of them, and suffered for it.
* ''[[Lesbian Vampire Killers]]'' At times seems to be parodying the ridiculous oversexualisation of female vampires and vampire clichés, it also has long scenes of gratuitous nudity and a massive phallic sword [[MacGuffin]].
* ''[[Mystery Men]]'' cannot decide whether it is a ruthless [[Deconstruction]] of the [[Superhero]] genre, or an [[Affectionate Parody]]. At first, the "heroes" are made to look like some deluded loons <s>in a world without superpowers</s>... until an old mentor and a new member with actual superpowers appear, and then the bunch of losers finally save the day against all odds.
** Ultimately, it ends up firmly on the side of [[Affectionate Parody]]. ''[[Mystery Men]]'' may [[Lampshade Hanging|hang a few lampshades here and there]], but it's rooted firmly in comic book logic. The only subversion is that the film focuses on superhero [[Fan Boy|Fanboys]] who end up inheriting the real job.
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** There's a scene were he shoots up an entire room full of bad guys WHILE having sex, and another were he shoots out the umbilical cord of a newborn baby. People took this movie seriously?
* ''Showtime'', a 2002 [[Eddie Murphy]]/[[Robert De Niro]] flop begins as a clever parody of [[Buddy Cop Show|buddy cop movies]], then rapidly degrades into a straight action film with dismal results.
* ''[[Spice World]]'' can't seem to decide if it's a self-spoof, a harsh satire of the Spice Girls themselves, or just a vapid ripoff of ''A Hard Day's Night''.
* ''[[Starship Troopers]]'': Your enjoyment of [[The Film of the Book|the film version]] may depend on whether you think it's a parody. The movie started simply as a movie about a war with alien bugs until someone pointed out vague similarities with the book, and [[Executive Meddling|meddlesome executives]] insisted they [[In Name Only|buy the rights to the name to avoid a lawsuit.]] The director claimed that he found the book too slow and depressing to get through, so he decided to make the whole thing a [[Stealth Parody]] of fascist propaganda, which he felt the book was leaning towards.
* ''[[This Is Spinal Tap]]'' A lot of people didn't understand that the "[[Rockumentary]]" film was a parody of the burgeoning heavy metal scene of the time. [[Stealth Parody|People thought it was a documentary of a real band]]. Much of this was probably because of how much [[Truth in Television]] it had (Eddie [[Van Halen]] is quoted as not finding it funny because "everything in that movie had happened to me"... Which just goes to show how [[Serious Business|serious Eddie Van Halen takes himself]]).
** Confusing things further, [[De Fictionalisation|Spinal Tap actually toured]]. After opening act [[A Mighty Wind|The Folksmen.]]
* ''[[True Lies]]'': Either a 90's action comedy, or a parody thereof.
* ''[[Van Helsing]]'' couldn't decide if it was an [[Affectionate Parody]] of old fashioned horror movies, a straight parody, or a [[Massive Multiplayer Crossover]] of the genre. Although it might be considered "[[Two-Fisted Tales|pulp]]" like ''[[The Mummy Trilogy]]''.
** Interestingly, whether or not a person likes ''Van Helsing'' seems to be determined a great deal by whether they thought it was a parody or not.
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== Literature ==
* ''[[A Series of Unfortunate Events]]'' varies between [[Affectionate Parody]], [[Deconstructive Parody]], and just being extremely [[Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness|silly]].
* ''I Kissed a Zombie and I Liked It'' parodies YA [[Paranormal Romance]], eg. ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' and its ilk. The message it sends is that it's silly to [[Space Whale Aesop|literally give up your life just to be with a guy]] yet Alley would have gladly done so had Doug not {{spoiler|been torn apart by feral zombies he created himself.}}
** {{spoiler|[[Word of God|From the author]] - nah, they would have broken up in about six months. But I didn't have time to write a book that long. }}
* ''[[Snow Crash]]'' is an [[Indecisive Parody]] of [[Cyberpunk]]. In places it feels like a checklist of all the cyberpunk tropes ramped [[Up to Eleven]]: instead of the [[Mega Corp]] being as powerful as governments, corporations literally ''replace'' governments. The [[Hero Protagonist]] is ''named'' Hiro Protagonist, and is both the world's greatest hacker ''and'' the world's greatest [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana-duelist]]. [[Evil Counterpart|Raven]] is the epitome of [[Badass]], [[Invoked Trope|complete with a whole passage explaining in detail why]] he is the world's greatest badass. There are infodumps about various subjects, from toilet paper to Sumerian mythology, thrown in at random. From the [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|mock-epic]] first chapter to the insane climax, it oozes [[Rule of Cool]]. It's considered a landmark work of Cyberpunk, a parody of Cyberpunk, and a herald of [[Post Cyber Punk]].
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** [[Alanis Morissette]]'s cover does it much better.
*** But at that point it's the [[Genre Shift]] that makes it funny.
* [[
* Dethklok, the [[Defictionalization|Defictionalized]] [[Death Metal]] band from ''[[Metalocalypse]]'', border on this. While certainly satirical, the virtual band's music is actually quite good, with drums from the [[Heavy Metal|Metal]] veteran Gene Hoglan from The [[Devin Townsend]] Project.
** [[Your Mileage May Vary]]. There's plenty of metal heads that denounce Dethklok. [http://metal-archives.com/review.php?id=170953 Take a look at the metal-archives.com review page for the first Dethalbum.]
*** Noting, of course, that most of the reviews vary from lukewarm to positive, with ratings of around 60-90%, and that of the few bad reviews, one is titled "I hate this and anyone who likes it is a scumbag", which betrays just the ''slightest'' twinge of bias.
** Also, while it would be entirely possible to either interpret the over-the-top guitar solos as straight over-the-top guitar solos or parodies of over-the-top guitar solos, the lyrics are fairly unambiguously parodic.
* [[Jethro Tull|Jethro Tull's]] 1972 effort ''Thick as a Brick'' was intended to be a parody of [[Progressive Rock]], in response to Ian Anderson's discontent of their previous album consistently being called a [[Concept Album]]. Of course, today the album is deemed one of the essential classics of the genre. So, depending on how you look at it, they either [[Gone Horribly Right|did it right]] or [[Gone Horribly Wrong|terribly, terribly wrong]]. A [[Sequel]] came out 40 years later in 2012.
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== Web Original ==
* ''[[A Very Potter Musical]]'' and its sequel run on [[Rule of Funny]]--until they get to a particularly serious moment from the books and play it up as heartwrenchingly as possible before settling back into nonsense again.
* Meta example: In ''[[My Little Pony: Camaraderie Is Supernatural]]'', an [[The Abridged Series|abridged]] parody of ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic|My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic]]'', Twilight Sparkle explains that a proper parody has to stay close to its source material and cannot just go off the rails with whatever the author thinks would be funny.
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