Caroline, the drunken matriarch (played by Gina McKee, Notting Hill and Wonderland) of an already horribly broken family of six minus one (the father has already deserted them and shacked up with a replacement spouse) is taught a cruel and cleansing lesson by her four children. They lock her in the basement sauna until she sobers up and rediscovers the true meaning of their family and her place in its structure. While posing as her mother, the eldest daughter Vanessa accidentally stumbles upon the fact that her father lied about a great many things, including the fact that he strong armed the mother into breast feeding the children. The trouble with this unconscionably implausible and
desperately simplistic scrap of melodrama is simply that every single event that takes place in the movie lacks any sound amount of dramatic punch. Though a level of satisfaction lies in the way the children compile their observations and use them to pummel their parents with moral diatribes, it gets thoroughly diluted by the ever-present looming of an uppity, fairy tale ending. By the time you’ve sorted through the wan plot twists, and the tirelessly sappy score laced with its counterpart, a hail of souring, borderline laughable dialogue. As I watched it, few movies came to mind that I could pit it against for perspective (though the structure and content have an inevitable generic aura); perhaps this is because the majority of the movies that even remotely resemble Mothertime are entirely forgettable.

These spoofs are getting more popular, gathering more steam and, on the whole, not exactly working up to potential. Take Joel Gallen (MTV Movie Awards Parodies), a film maker who believes wholeheartedly in mocking teen movies - but can't quite seem to get his own film not to resemble a standard teen movie. More than just the production values are a little inferior - the structural choice of the film - to have a narrative like the teen movies it knocks - seems more than a bit too close to home. And the structure is probably is the right choice. For another movie. But the fatal flaw of Not Another Teen Movie is that it is too melodramatic, to interested in keeping its story clear to realize that its practicing what it should be preaching against. Too much of it is outright sight gags rather than a quick-witted send-up of the films themselves. Don't make a film patterned after the teen movies. Make a film that understands them and can make fun of their mechanisms, rather than their specifics. Otherwise, its old hat - and few belly laughs. Oh, it has some inspired moments (a nude foreign exchange student and a stock black character work well) - but for every one of these niceities - there are moments that ape the Farrelly's (like the barrage of people - including a priest, grandparents, etc., who visit Jamie Pressley while she's desperately trying to use a dildo) and characters that seem less like caricatures than mere examples (Pressley's father, Randy Quaid, who doesn't seem reminiscent of any teen flick father in particular, he just seems unmannered and gruff - which isn't exactly hilarious). There is a parody of Varsity Blues midway through the film (that mixes with a parody of Bring It On that's less successful) that is spot on. For a split second, Gallen & Co. catch the fever of hostility moviegoers would apply to these empty-headed teen beats by giving us a coach that inserts profanity seemingly at random and a football game that's clearly been thought out in order to mock the tone of teen. Had Not Another Teen Movie grabbed that idea and applied it to the whole thing - this could have been the spoof that worked.

Know what? Collateral Damage seems as hopelessly dated as 1985's Commando - - - only it was made just this year. Hoping to escape from the excrutiatingly obvious Arnie-against-innumerable -faceless-baddies plotline with a titlee ripped from the Oklahoma Bombing headlines, this revenge yarn tackles the South American people as if they were extras in a Spanish-exploitation film. The most flabbergasting aspect of this steaming pile of crap is probably the strange mesh of quasi-cameos done by A-List actors not usually known for such a hopeless nosedive (in no particular order: John Leguizamo, John Turturro and Elias Koteas). Schwarzenegger ain't getting any younger and his movies ain't getting any better. Without hyperbole, though, Collateral Damage is probably the worst film he's ever made (and I've seen both End of Days and Last Action Hero). There doesn't appear to be a single redeeming factor whatsoever.

Myles Parker steals the show. He's a real porn dealer. Everything else just seems ridiculous. You made a spoof about a fake porn troupe attempting to score distribution with a fake film and the most interesting thing about it is that which didn't require your talent and something you didn't plan. Okay, that's just sad.