Parody Trailer: '30 Rock' Spoofs Garry Marshall with Star-Studded 'MLK Day'

Friday, 27 January 2012 12:52 Written by  Jordan DeSaulnier
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Parody Trailer: '30 Rock' Spoofs Garry Marshall with Star-Studded 'MLK Day'

Valentine's Day and New Year's Eve.  For two consecutive years, director Garry Marshall and screenwriter Katherine Fugate served up holiday-themed ensembles unreasonably packed with bankable movie stars and romantic comedy cliches.  Had New Year's Eve been a bigger hit, you can only imagine that we have spent the next several years besieged by these novelty offerings until the holidays were finally exhausted.  That could still happen, actually.  But even if it does, we'll always have MLK Day, a parody trailer for a fictitious romantic comedy that expertly eviscerates the cloying, manipulative style of those films.

The trailer kicks off with Emma Stone and SNL's Andy Samberg appearing as the sort of stock characters whose generic dilemmas and obvious arcs are summed up with Samberg's perfectly oblivious delivery of the on the nose line, "Too bad we're just platonic friends."  From there, it features Nick Cannon and Jane Krakowski's vapid Jenna Maroney exchanging cliches before trotting through the requisite ensemble cast of recognizable actors.

Obviously, the video comes from Hulu.

The best inclusion in that strange list of castmembers for the nonexistent Martin Luther King Day? Specialist Lynndie England, the U.S Army reservist who became notorious for her role in the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal.  While you've no doubt seen the famous pictures of England and her fellow reservists, check out the fascinating Errol Morris documentary Standard Operating Procedure, which explores the scandal and the actual story behind those photos.  Really intriguing stuff.

Sorry to end on a down note.  Perk yourself up by rewatching Maroney's The Rural Juror.

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