Scary
Movie (2000)
Rated R
Starring: Anna Faris, Shannon Elizabeth,
and Jon Abrahams
Rating:

out
of

|
I've
bemoaned the 1990s teen horror movie revival in my reviews of such "classics" as
I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. Scream,
the film that started the revival, was was an inventive and funny movie
that also managed
to scare audiences at the same time. For the last five years, teen horror
movies have attempted to recapture its formula with "smart" characters
and "wise-to-the-clichés" scripts. All of them, including
the Scream sequels, have failed miserably. When I heard that the Wayans Brothers were going to parody the new generation
of horror films, I was interested to see how it would turn out. There
is plenty of material to work with and a wealth of laughs to be had, I
thought. Too bad the Wayans decided to be more interested in ways to work
penis jokes into the formula than concentrate on making a truly funny
movie.
Scary
Movie loosely follows the same plot as Scream, but veers all over
the place to work in jabs at other movies like I Know What You Did
Last Summer, Halloween, The Sixth Sense, The
Blair Witch Project, and others.
Apparently, sticking to horror movies was too limiting, so the Wayans
had to work in references to The Matrix, Titanic, Budweiser commercials,
and a plethora of sex jokes and gutter humor.
Scary
Movie half-heartedly attempts to ape the Abrahams - Zucker Brothers
style of humor from films like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. Due to poor
direction by Keenen Ivory Wayans, the jokes that require a subtle touch
are driven home with a hammer and others are lost in the noise of drug
jokes and the script's seeming fixation on homosexual sex.
There are a few inspired moments, but they're simply not worth sitting
through the rest of the drivel to see. Scary Movie's lack of humor is
scary. Trivia: "Scary
Movie" was the working title of Scream. (Source: The
Internet Movie Database) |