CREDIT: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
In their prime, ZAZ films were chock full of jokes and outrageous sight gags.

As long as something exists, someone will disapprovingly or lovingly mock it for what it is. Parody by definition doesn’t have to be funny, but when paired with movie, it immediately invokes a dozen Airplane! and “Don’t call me Shirley!” quips from the crowd.

Movie parodies of course existed since a man sequentially photographed a horse running around a track to settle a bet and Mel Brooks’ take on the Frankenstein mythos, but it was this ZAZ (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, Jerry Zucker) comedy that re-introduced movie audiences to a leaner, meaner, more rapid-fire farce, jumpstarting the comedic career of now-legend Leslie Nielsen. They really had come a long way from Kentucky Fried Movie.

Following the immediate success of Airplane! and distancing themselves from the sequel, the Zuckers continued to produce parody hits one after the other. Top Secret! was a parody of overblown political action thrillers where a young, all-American Val Kilmer faced down the East German communist menace. Shifting away from parody with Ruthless People, and returning back to it with their next Leslie Nielsen collaboration, The Naked Gun, the Zuckers really were on a roll.

But something happened.

The ZAZ team split up after the release of Naked Gun 33 1/3, while concurrently, Mel Brooks threw in the towel after the failure of Dracula, Dead and Loving It! in 1995. It seemed like the public was starting to tire of this style of rapid-delivery comedy layered thick with sight gags and double entendres or maybe the filmmakers were just starting to slip.

Regardless, the Zuckers sans Jim Abrahams desperately tried to continue their legacy of comedy with BASEketball (starring the then-almost- famous Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park), Jane Austen’s Mafia!, before finally taking on the Scary Movie franchise from the Wayans brothers. But it seems no matter where they go, the Zuckers just seem passé now, the quality of their films now a mere shadow of their past works.

The Movie-movie

When talking about the undeniable influence the Zuckers have had in comedy, it’s also important to mention how that influence has driven people to do wrong. Case in point: The Seltzer-Friedberg team. Responsible for cinematic atrocities such as Date Movie, Meet the Spartans, and Vampires Suck, and The Starving Games, these former Scary Movie writers are almost solely why parody and rapid-fire farces are in a terrible place today, promising Airplane!-style comedic hijinks but only delivering disappointment with their incredibly broad and shallow parodies of anything that’s had a minimum 15 minutes of fame. The Seltzerberg team seems to do better at destroying the reputation of the Zuckers than the Zuckers themselves.

Will the Zuckers ever return to their former glory? Will an inspired young comedy writer bring back the Zucker style, while breathing fresh new air into it? To end on a cliché, only time can tell. For now, all we can do is marathon the Naked Gun! trilogy for the nth time.