I won't keep it a secret from anyone: I couldn't care less about James Bond. Maybe I'm not a man's man. Maybe I'm not a proper film critic. Maybe I just don't have the time to watch all the 007 movies in order to convince myself that they're not all the same. Whatever the reason for my disinterest in the series, the painful truth is that I'm completely lost when it comes to discussing Bond. This could be why I don't hang out with a lot of movie geeks. Or, more likely, why they don't hang out with me.

It would make sense for my disinterest in Bond to extend to the films that parody the character and the series. Sure, I appreciate a good spoof, but there's not much enjoyment for me in a joke I don't get. So, just as I don't have a desire to watch the Scary Movie franchise because I don't watch the horror movies it makes fun of, I probably wouldn't like a concentrated spoof of the Bond franchise. Luckily for me, most Bond parodies aren't strictly a series of specific jokes and gags that I don't understand. They typically have something more to offer. And those that I can appreciate and enjoy are due to my having a general, pop-cultural knowledge of Bond films, a taste for simple satire and a preference for liberal, anarchic and random humor.

So, I've made a list of ways in which Bond has been spoofed that are accessible to the non-Bond-fan. There are others out there, from pornographic parodies to obscure foreign takes on the character, but I'll let the real 007 aficionados seek out every spoof out there. ...

A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.