Not Another Teen Movie is the kind of parody that doesn’t just mock the genre—it lovingly dissects every cliché until there’s nothing left but laughter and the faint smell of 2001 nostalgia. Released in December of that year, this Joel Gallen-directed comedy took aim at the teen film boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, specifically targeting She’s All That as its primary victim while also taking potshots at American Pie, Cruel Intentions, Bring It On, and basically every movie your high school self quoted at lunch.
Chris Evans stars as Jake Wyler, the popular jock who makes a bet that he can turn the “most hopeless girl at school” into prom queen material. His target is Janey Briggs, played by Chyler Leigh, whose crime against popularity is wearing glasses, a ponytail, and paint-splattered overalls. The film treats this transformation with the reverence of a makeover montage, except the joke is that Janey was never actually ugly—she was just dressed like someone who had hobbies beyond contouring.
What makes Not Another Teen Movie work is its relentless commitment to the bit. Every character is a walking stereotype pushed to absurd extremes. Jaime Pressly plays Priscilla, the nasty cheerleader who schemes to steal cheers from a rival school’s all-Black squad. Eric Christian Olsen is Austin, the cocky blond guy whose entire personality is hair gel and entitlement. Deon Richmond plays Malik, the token Black guy who literally introduces himself with “I’m just supposed to smile and stay out of the conversation.” The film knows exactly what it’s doing, and it does it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.
Chris Evans, in his pre-Captain America days, proves he had comedic chops from the start. His Jake Wyler is both the object of satire and its delivery mechanism, a jock who learns nothing but earns the audience’s affection anyway. The film made $66 million on a $15 million budget, which in 2001 terms meant “successful enough to be remembered, not successful enough to spawn a franchise.” Which is probably for the best—some jokes only work once.
The humor is aggressively un-PC by modern standards, which is either a feature or a bug depending on your tolerance for early-2000s comedy. There are jokes about incest, scatological humor, and a running gag about a girl who wants her brother to notice her that would never make it past a studio notes session today. But there’s also genuine cleverness in how it dismantles the genre’s tropes—the makeover scene, the prom night climax, the wise janitor who dispenses life advice.
Not Another Teen Movie remains a time capsule of a specific era, when teen films were so ubiquitous that parodying them felt necessary. Watch it with friends who remember the originals, and prepare to quote lines that have no business being as funny as they are.
Stream Not Another Teen Movie now and rediscover the parody that roasted every teen movie you secretly loved.
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