Two Teams

Rating: Null/10 (1 November 2004)

Spoilers herein.
Nearly all films are about other films, sometimes literally so.
An 'ordinary' mass film purports to abstract life by replaying stuff from the established vocabulary. I dare say there are thousands and thousands of sports films with this plot: apparent weaklings triumph which a key individual reaffirms some sort of purity. Last night I saw 'Barbershop 2' which though not strictly a sports movie, wears the metaphor like many blacks wear 'leisure' athletic clothes.
That's the ordinary. Then you have the kind of film that does precisely the same abstraction, except instead of purportedly from life, it is from the genre. Exact same everything, except the abstraction is that much more extreme.
Ted's law says that the two abstractions (from life to the ordinary film and from the ordinary film to the spoof) must be exactly the same. That's because ALL the cinematic mechanisms must be the same, else there is no joke.
I believe this style started in 1950's TeeVee skits, and probably 15 or 20 minutes is about as long as you can sustain the joke. To judge from the success of Austin Powers, some folks can take it longer.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.