AllMovie

A comedy film which spoofs traditional genres or a specific film, poking fun at its conventions or plotlines. The makers of these film types expect audiences to understand the well-established cliches and archetypes that are therein ridiculed with inside jokes and broad strokes. Parodies offer a lowbrow, tongue-in-cheek counterpoint to the more serious revisionist approach used by movements like the French New Wave and genres like Spaghetti westerns, which favor subversive tactics. First started by Mack Sennett in the silent era, these films didn't find their popular heyday until the '70s and '80s when Mel Brooks spoofed the western with (Blazing Saddles and mocked the Hitchcock thriller with High Anxiety, while the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team exhausted the form with films like Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane! and Top Secret!. Two of the finest examples of parody are This is Spinal Tap, which sends up the conventions of the concert documentary, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which skewers the Knights of the Round Table.