Film of the Week: Superfast

A colleague at work recommended this film as I am a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise, and when he mentioned it being a parody, my first reaction were the words, “but, hasn’t the Fast and Furious franchise gradually developed into a parody of itself, anyway,” a tongue in cheek comment about how the films have increased the high octane driving, the insane stunts – going from a franchise about street racing to conducting missions from government organisations, with stunts including being chased by a submarine bursting through ice in supercharged cars. The franchise has come a long way, there’s no doubt about that, but even good fans state that it has essentially become something that doesn’t always takes itself seriously anymore. But we all still flock to see the next film, to see what crazy stuff will happen this time round. Just because it’s ridiculous, doesn’t mean it isn’t entertaining. My point is before I trailed off slightly is mainly questioning how to make a parody of something that became a parody of itself? The answer is, parody the stuff before it started the gradual shift. Makes perfect sense and I’m disappointed I didn’t piece it together before watching the film.

With a few parody movies, all they did was half-heartedly stitch together a bunch of references in an attempt to make a coherent story, but end up with an unfunny mess of a film. Parody is so easy to get wrong, but if you get it right, can be side-splittingly funny. There are two types of parody movies which if done right can be really funny: those who poke fun at an entire genre, and those who poke fun at a specific franchise. An example of poking fun at an entire genre: Airplane, one of the greatest comedy films of all time. Superfast falls into the category of poking fun at a specific franchise, so you do get more entertainment value out of it if you have watched the Fast and Furious films. Going in blind without seeing any films from the main franchise, there is still plenty of moments which would get a decent laugh.

Being a parody, the budget is understandably going to be lower than that of any of the films it’s poking fun at, but the final film does get me laughing hard. A parody’s job is to go overboard with everything from the main franchise, and so there was a part of me wandering just how over the top the main action stunt sequence will be. If the main franchise normally gives the impression of defying physics itself, then where do you go from there?

There is a stunt where they drag a massive safe down the road. Being pulled by cars you know is completely incapable of pulling of such a feat, that action sequence fun regardless of how possible it may or may not be in real life. In Superfast, they ramp up that sequence and go for the entire building. Two cars, pull an entire building across town; because parodies.

I can see why my colleague recommended it to me, and I am going to recommend it to you as well. I wouldn’t say it’s the best parody film of all time, but it’s certainly better than the atrocity such as Epic Movie and Disaster Movie. Superfast takes the less crazy elements from the main franchise and meddles with them just enough to give you a good laugh.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)