It probably would have helped if I'd seen all (or at least some) of the movies that this parodies, but as it stands, DON'T BE A MENACE is consistently funny enough on its own. From the Wayans' Brothers, DON'T BE A MENACE parodies/spoofs just about every "hood" movie from the 90's, like BOYZ N THE HOOD, MENACE 2 SOCIETY, etc. Shawn Wayans stars as Ashtray, a 19-year-old who moves in with his younger (than him) father, and Marlon Wayans as Loc Dog, one of his friends. If there's one big weakness, it's that there's not really a plot to speak of, meaning that the film plays like a series of skits rather than a cohesive story. That being said, there were a lot of laugh-out-loud moments and funny running gags. The best ones, to me, were Keenen Ivory Wayans as the mailman who pops up from time to time and says "Message!" whenever the "preachy" moments come. Also, everyone (and I mean everyone) drinks only malt liquor. Generally, the humor that works the best has to do with pointing out stereotypes in these types of movies (and life in general), rather than the scatological stuff which was often a little too gross for me. Thankfully, it wasn't relied upon as much as it is now in movies of this ilk, but fart jokes and foul-mouthed grannies will only get you so far. For those types of jokes, they were funny the first few times, but became a little tiresome later. This is also an extremely quotable movie, with such memorable lines as, "Break yo self, fool!" So, while I haven't seen really any of the movies this parodied, I have seen other Wayans' Brothers movies and this compares favorably to those. I'd consider this the last genuinely good spoof from them, even if the story structure is all but nonexistent. It doesn't really live up to Mel Brooks (but honestly, what can?), but as a distillation of 90's urban movie clichés, DON'T BE A MENACE is on fairly solid ground.