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The 25 Best Action-Movie Parodies Ever
For as long as we’ve had films packed with fights and stunts, we’ve also made fun of them.
“Crime doesn’t pay … well, it paid a little!” Amy Heckerling’s gag-a-minute spoof of classic gangster pictures is filled with tommy guns, car chases, and explosions — one of which leads to Peter Boyle holding a porcelain handle thinking it is his severed “ dork.” Michael Keaton is the slick wise guy up against a conniving Joe Piscopo, with Marilu Henner as his moll, Griffin Dunne as his wide-eyed kid brother, and Maureen Stapleton as his potty-mouthed Irish immigrant “ma.” The film’s ludicrous script — which swapped in curse words with precensored nonsense like “fargin icehole” — was co-written by Harry Colomby, a show-business legend who was Thelonius Monk’s manager while also teaching high school in New York City. A controversial cavalcade of parody, Tropic Thunder zings gross-out studio comedies by imagining Jack Black in something called The Fatties: Fart Two, Robert Downey Jr. lampooning Method actors with an Australian thesp who transforms into a blaxploitation character (probably something he’d prefer we all forget), and Ben Stiller flashing back to his Oscar-bait performance as a man with a developmental disability (we’re not repeating the quote). Well, if you’ve ever had to assume a crash position, you certainly felt your heart rate going up, so we’re saying “yes.” Moreover, the film’s “anything for a laugh” attitude means there really are no rules here, from Robert Hayes literalizing his drinking problem, to Barbara Billingsley “speaking jive,” to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar moonlighting as an airline pilot for some reason, to Peter Graves asking a little boy if he likes movies about gladiators — possibly the greatest line reading of all time.
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