Cinematical Seven: Mocking 'Harry Potter'

by Dawn Taylor Jul 14th 2009 // 9:03PM

Filed under: Cinematical Seven, Harry Potter



Ah, we do so enjoy tearing down that which we love. With the Harry Potter series of books and movies being perhaps the most successful franchises of their kind in this or any other lifetime, it's only natural that it would be the most spoofed bunch of stories as well. From The Simpsons and MadTV to stage musicals and RiffTrax commentaries, there have been hundreds of parodies since the Pottermania first swept the world. Here's just a tiny handful:

1) The jokes began in earnest with the huge popularity of 2001's film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. That year, David Letterman offered up the Top Ten Signs That Your Kid is a Wizard. Among them: "You say, 'Do you think that lawn is gonna mow itself?' But then it does," "His homework ate the dog," and "You catch him in the bathroom polishing his wand."

2) Also from 2001, the Mad magazine parody, "Harry Plodder and the Sorry-Ass Story" . Mad continued to parody each succeeding film with titles like "Harry Plodder and the Lamest of Sequels", and "Harry Plodder and the Pre-Teen Nerds Are Actin' Bad" (it would seem that the words "Prisoner of Azkaban" are devilshly hard to spoof.) The jokes are pretty weak -- "Every first-year has to put on the Snorting Hat! That way, all students start their education with something in common!" "Yeah! Head lice!" -- but long-time Mad artist Mort Drucker's wicked caricatures make them worth a read. (via MuggleNet.com)

3) For Britain's Comic Relief in 2003, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders offered "Harry Potter and the Chamber Pot of Azerbaijan." Keep an eye out for Jeremy Irons as Snape:










4) Over at Modern Humorist, J.K. Rowling crashed headlong into Dave Eggers with "Harry Potter and the Heratbreaking Work of Staggering Genius":

"Three cheers for Harry Potter!" shouts Hermione from the beach below as I glide down. Three cheers. Brilliant. This is how we speak to each other, a ha-ha on ourselves and the important work we are doing. We are the ones who will save Hogwarts. We are wizards and witches and everyone else is a Muggle. They cannot conjure. They can not transfigure. Oh, they are over.
Hermione is holding something.
"Harry," says Ron, breathless, excited. "Harry, look what Hermione found!" Hermione is holding the Sorting Hat.
"You'll never believe where I found it." But she's wrong. I will believe, because I want to believe, I want so much to-
"The Sorting Hat smells like urine," I say.
"It does not," Ron says.
"It does."
"How could it smell like urine?"
"Malfoy! He must have peed on it!

4) Saturday Night Live has parodied Potter a few times -- and Rachel Dratch is a hilarious Harry -- most notably with Lindsay Lohan as a busting-out-of-her-sweater Hermione. But an arguably funnier sketch featured Amy Poehler as J.K. Rowling "outing" Dumbledore -- complete with supposedly deleted scenes from Prisoner of Azkaban featuring Bill Hader as the wizard. Worth watching for the "gay wizard bar" scene alone.

5) Remember when Brokeback Mountain came out, and suddenly there were all these trailers recut with the Brokeback music to make them seem like the characters were gay? Well, this is one of them. And it's pretty funny:





6) The Onion has offered some of the most consistently hilarious Potter parodies, including J.K. Rowling Ends Harry Potter Series After Discovering Boys, New Harry Potter Film Turns Children On To The Magic Of Not Reading, and Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers. In a weird bit of stupidity, one pre-movie-series Onion article titled Harry Potter Books Spark Rise In Satanism Among Children from 2000 was copied and sent out as a chain e-mail to thousands of people, who believed it to be an actual news story.


7) And then there's Robot Chicken. Because no list of parodies is complete without Robot Chicken (warning: silly adult content)



As mentioned above, there are possibly thousands of Potter parodies out there. What are some of the better ones we missed?

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