Ever since the 1998 success of There's Something About Mary, Hollywood movies have been trying to out-gross each other. Constantly pushing the envelope to see what they can get away with. These type of movies can be entertaining if done right. If these films have some sort of point to them and use the sick humor as a backdrop they rise above the imitators. If, like the new film Scary Movie, they refuse to give us any kind of original plot and consistently throw crude, and often unfunny humor at us then there is a problem.
I guess if I think about it there is a good explanation of why Scary Movie has done so well this summer. The marketing for the film is genius. With a very popular trailer, which I happen to think is very overrated, and a very wide release the horror movie spoof was able to run away with 42 million dollars opening weekend. The film then only dropped 38% the next weekend. This is both sad and scary considering what kind of film this is.
The whole premise of the film, which is directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, is to spoof as many films as possible in an hour and a half, but most importantly spoof the 1996 moneymaking machine Scream. This is a rather odd film to make a spoof of since I basically considered Scream a spoof itself. It both poked fun at, and added a new twist to the slasher films which were popular in the 80's. The film basically resurrected the horror genre and paved the way for other teen horror films like I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Halloween: H20.
Scary Movie basically follows the same story line as the original Scream film. They take a lot of exact dialogue from various films also. They have even casted actors in their 20's or 30's to play teenagers. This gives us an unoriginal and often annoying film. It is shocking it took six writers to come up with this stuff.
In the film you have Cindy (Anna Faris), a nice, wholesome girl who resembles Neve Campbell's character in the Scream trilogy. When young women start getting killed by a lunatic in a ghost mask, it makes all of the teenagers, excuse me, adults playing teenagers very nervous. Does any of this sound familiar? If you have seen any of the Scream films, you have seen this movie before.
Therefore, if it is an unoriginal spoof the jokes can at least be funny right? Well I am sorry to say this film is pretty unfunny also. Yes, there are some funny bits in the film. Marlon Wayans is hysterical as a drugged out teenager. But the jokes get so old very fast, and the jokes are even as predictable as the already known plot.
The filmmakers are so busy spoofing other films they let the movie get away from them. I have never seen a film spoof so many other films. Great spoofs like Airplane, The Naked Gun, and Austin Powers were hilarious because they had a number of original bits in them along with spoofing some of our favorites. Scary Movie may attempt some original humor but even that is unfunny after awhile. Most of the time though it makes no attempt at anything orginal. The viewer would probably get more laughs if they watched the movies they are spoofing here while drunk. Scream is a scream after about five beers!
The only redeemable thing in this film is the fact it does have a likeable cast. Shawn Wayans has a few funny bits as a high school football player who refuses to admit he is gay. Shannon Elizabeth, fresh off of her star making performance in American Pie, does the best with what she is given playing a trampy high school friend.
The only thing director Wayans has to be proud of is that he released this film at the right time, and was able to promote the heck out of it. The man is capable of doing much much better work. There is probably more laughs in a half-hour of his now defunct television show In Living Color. At least that show did not have to stoop to the extremely crude and nasty humor like Scary Movie does. To give you a hint of how bad the humor in this film is, it is the rumored the directors parents were so shocked they left in the middle of the movie. Now that is sign of disgust. My parents would probably walk out too if I made a film where a man is killed by getting a phallus stuck in his ear.
So in conclusion, in this society we live in it does not surprise me a movie like this would be one of the biggest of the year. More than anything, it saddens me. I am not a prude. I can handle raunchy humor and I laughed my butt off at movies like South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut, and Me, Myself, & Irene. But at least those were funny films. Scary Movie, on the other hand, is only the most overrated film of the summer.
This hilarious, must-see comedy smash places Carmen Electra (TV s Baywatch), Marlon Wayans (Senseless), Jon Abrahams (Boiler Room, The Faculty) and so...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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