Documentaries often feel boring, stuffy, and self-righteous. Luckily, you can always count on brilliant, sarcastic smart-alecks to make fun of films of this genre, creating humorous, and often controversial satires! Our Top 5 Mockumentaries list provides a great introduction into the rich world of satirized documentaries, offering the five greatest examples of the style!
1) This is Spinal Tap
Satirizes the wild personal behavior and musical pretensions of hard rock and heavy metal bands
Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of 4 and wrote "This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest, most intelligent, most original films of the year. The satire has a deft, wicked touch”
Was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry
In the fictional small town of Blaine, Missouri, a handful of delusional residents prepare to put on a community theater production led by an eccentric director
Follows the contestants in a beauty pageant, held in the small fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota, in which various contestants begin to die in suspicious ways
Twisted and brilliant script, satirizing Midwestern culture and pageantry
Considered a cult classic today, and has a devoted following
Follows a crew of filmmakers following a serial killer, recording his horrific crimes for a documentary they are producing. At first dispassionate observers, they find themselves caught up in the increasingly chaotic violence
Received the André Cavens Award for Best Film by the Belgian Film Critics Association
Screened at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival where it won the SACD award for Best Feature and the Special Award of the Youth
Controversial content and extreme violence was off-putting to some viewers, and resulted in the film being banned in Sweden
The legacy of Man Bites Dog has influenced filmmakers drawing inspiration from the film’s premise of a camera crew following around a serial killer
Purports to tell the story of 'forgotten' New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie, and the rediscovery of his lost films, which presenter Peter Jackson claims to have found in an old shed
Originally marketed as a documentary, it fooled a huge number of people thanks to its convincing, pitch perfect tone
The television network that first broadcast the film received mountains of angry and even threatening mail
Contains fake interviews with famous individuals, such as Sam Neill and Harvey Weinstein
Thomas Robins, the actor who portrays Colin MacKenzie, is today more easily recognized by audiences as Déagol in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
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