If there was ever a movie that did not need an extended cut this is the one. This type of full-on parody is bound to miss in places. 'Not Another Teen Movie' has about the same number of never-ending jokes as 'Airplane', with a much lower hit to miss ratio. Although the original DVD included a dozen of the worse misses as deleted scenes, the actual movie would have been better if about 50 of the scenes that were actually included had made the deleted category instead.
The original cut must have been a post-production nightmare as the editor found scene after scene that just didn't work but was forced to include one horrible segment after another just to build up the running time. The extended cut not only includes all the original cut's weak stuff but supplements it with the mega-garbage that was originally trimmed. So save your money and stay with the cheaper and SHORTER version-you won't be missing anything worth viewing unless you want it to torture your friends.
To be completely fair this movie did not stand much of a chance. The teen movies they go after do not lend themselves to this treatment ('Can't Hardly Wait' is already satirical).
Instead of being clever, these filmmakers accomplish little more than recycling copycat material from a host of teen films they think they are skewering in a cool fashion. You soon pick up on a lot of negative energy from the cast, they just don't seem to be getting much enjoyment from working with this material, there is no spontaneous merriment.
It is not a 'little' movie, Gallen had a large budget and assembled a professional crew who shot a technically (camera-audio-direction) sound film. But when your pre-production phase can't manage more than a few hundred regurgitated inside jokes and clueless dopey references that fly over the head of the targeted demographics, no amount of competent production talent can save the day.
A good way to make an objective assessment of a project like this is to imagine which of the participants would actually want this to be a part of their resume. Aside from the camera, audio, and wardrobe people it is a career breaker. A notable exception is Mia Kirshner, who was able to turn what is arguably the movie's worst role into a showcase of her considerable talent as actress. Her part (the incestuous mean girl) is poorly written and totally unfunny yet she finds a way to play it so it actually works. Talk about turning adversity into opportunity.
If watching Mia is not enough reason to sit through the film there is also Chyler Leigh and Jaime Pressly-even if their acting is average their decorative qualities are exceptional. One of the few continuing inside jokes that actually works is how Leigh's 'plain Janey' character in glasses and ponytail (referred to as 'the pretty ugly girl') is actually more beautiful than the glamorous beauty into which she is transformed. And Pressly's 'Bring It On' parody is simply the funniest (and cleverest) scene in the film as she denies stealing a cheer from the black girls and then leads the white girls in the stolen routine with words unchanged: 'We are the North Compton Wildcats, we're black and we know it, we shake our big booties and show it, we ain't white, we definitely ain't white!' At 'John Hughes High School' (shot at same school as "She's the One") this direction-less parody plays on in the 'Anthony Michael Dining Hall' and on the field of 'Harry Dean Stadium' (these names are some of the funnier stuff). A bet is made on the metamorphosis of the "Ugly Duckling Girl Who's Really a Babe Underneath" (Chyler Leigh). Leigh has two especially funny scenes, one where she is frantically painting and another where her entire extended family blunders into her bedroom while she is using a vibrator (much like the zipper scene in 'What about Mary').
In the movie's second funniest scene, a naked foreign exchange student (based on Shannon Elizabeth's character in 'American Pie') speaks in her native language and the subtitles work their way around her breasts so as to NOT obscure her nipples.
The original cut must have been a post-production nightmare as the editor found scene after scene that just didn't work but was forced to include one horrible segment after another just to build up the running time. The extended cut not only includes all the original cut's weak stuff but supplements it with the mega-garbage that was originally trimmed. So save your money and stay with the cheaper and SHORTER version-you won't be missing anything worth viewing unless you want it to torture your friends.
To be completely fair this movie did not stand much of a chance. The teen movies they go after do not lend themselves to this treatment ('Can't Hardly Wait' is already satirical).
Instead of being clever, these filmmakers accomplish little more than recycling copycat material from a host of teen films they think they are skewering in a cool fashion. You soon pick up on a lot of negative energy from the cast, they just don't seem to be getting much enjoyment from working with this material, there is no spontaneous merriment.
It is not a 'little' movie, Gallen had a large budget and assembled a professional crew who shot a technically (camera-audio-direction) sound film. But when your pre-production phase can't manage more than a few hundred regurgitated inside jokes and clueless dopey references that fly over the head of the targeted demographics, no amount of competent production talent can save the day.
A good way to make an objective assessment of a project like this is to imagine which of the participants would actually want this to be a part of their resume. Aside from the camera, audio, and wardrobe people it is a career breaker. A notable exception is Mia Kirshner, who was able to turn what is arguably the movie's worst role into a showcase of her considerable talent as actress. Her part (the incestuous mean girl) is poorly written and totally unfunny yet she finds a way to play it so it actually works. Talk about turning adversity into opportunity.
If watching Mia is not enough reason to sit through the film there is also Chyler Leigh and Jaime Pressly-even if their acting is average their decorative qualities are exceptional. One of the few continuing inside jokes that actually works is how Leigh's 'plain Janey' character in glasses and ponytail (referred to as 'the pretty ugly girl') is actually more beautiful than the glamorous beauty into which she is transformed. And Pressly's 'Bring It On' parody is simply the funniest (and cleverest) scene in the film as she denies stealing a cheer from the black girls and then leads the white girls in the stolen routine with words unchanged: 'We are the North Compton Wildcats, we're black and we know it, we shake our big booties and show it, we ain't white, we definitely ain't white!' At 'John Hughes High School' (shot at same school as "She's the One") this direction-less parody plays on in the 'Anthony Michael Dining Hall' and on the field of 'Harry Dean Stadium' (these names are some of the funnier stuff). A bet is made on the metamorphosis of the "Ugly Duckling Girl Who's Really a Babe Underneath" (Chyler Leigh). Leigh has two especially funny scenes, one where she is frantically painting and another where her entire extended family blunders into her bedroom while she is using a vibrator (much like the zipper scene in 'What about Mary').
In the movie's second funniest scene, a naked foreign exchange student (based on Shannon Elizabeth's character in 'American Pie') speaks in her native language and the subtitles work their way around her breasts so as to NOT obscure her nipples.