SCARY MOVIE (2000) / ***
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. Screenplay by Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg, Buddy Johnson, Aaron Seltzer, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans. Starring Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Regina Hall. Running time: 86 minutes. Rated AA for mature subject matter and offensive language by the MFCB. Reviewed on July 7th, 2000.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
How do you review a film like "Scary Movie"? Certainly not on the basis of plot. The "story" of a spoof is usually just a framework for gags -- to assess it on that criterion would be like judging a dress on the quality of the hanger. Acting isn't really all that important either, as long as the performers possess a certain amount of charisma and some notion of comic timing. Direction? Virtually irrelevant. Cinematography? Get real.
No, all that matters in deciding whether or not "Scary Movie" is any good are the laughs. And "Scary Movie" is the first parody I've seen in years that has laughs in droves. But fair warning first: I'm a big fan of the "Naked Gun" movies. I enjoyed "Spaceballs". If your sense of humor runs contrary to my own, this review likely won't apply much to you.
"Scary Movie" started life as two separate screenplays -- "Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween" and "Last Summer I Screamed Because Friday The 13th Fell On Halloween" -- which were merged into one by director Keenen Ivory Wayans. Ironically, the final moniker was a working title for "Scream", the progenitor of the current crop of teen-oriented slasher films. If you haven't already guessed, "Scary Movie" is a pastiche of this whole genre. If you've been avoiding these sorts of pictures, you might want to give this one a pass too, as you might not get many of the jokes.
The storyline of "Scary Movie" broadly follows the plot of "Scream", with elements of other films (notably "Scream 2" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer") thrown in for good measure. We again start off with a Big Star making popcorn. In "Scream" it was Drew Barrymore (playing "Casey Becker"), here it's Carmen Electra (playing "Drew Becker", wink wink). The phone rings, and sure enough it's a serial killer on the other line, wearing the same Ghostface get-up as in "Scream". The voice on the phone wants to know what the noise is. Carmen explains she just farted. The killer was referring to the popcorn.
Soon Carmen is racing through the house and across her lawn. She comes to a signpost with arrows reading "Safety" and "Death" pointing in opposite directions. You can probably guess the rest. The movie plays out predictably from there, as teens are stalked and slain by the masked villain -- or is it villains? But, really, who cares about the story? It barely even makes sense, and the ending is particularly incredulous.
What is important is the way "Scary Movie" subverts its source material, and this it does very well. The "Father Death" mask, for instance, has gained the miraculous ability to reflect its owner's mood, generating some bizarre visuals when the killer is toquing up. Toward the end, the(?) murderer does a terrific imitation of Matthew Lillard, one of "Scream"'s homicidal teenagers.
"Scary Movie" doesn't just target the slasher genre, either. Everything from "The Matrix" to "Dawson's Creek" is up for grabs here, and there are some great send-ups of human behaviour. One of my favourite scenes has black actress Regina Hall attending a showing of "Shakespeare In Love". In a terrific pastiche of rude moviegoers (and, in particular, the reputation African-Americans have of talking back to the screen), Hall just doesn't stop chattering. She even talks on her cell phone, loudly, to the disgust of the all-white, upper-middle-class crowd. Ghostface slinks into the audience to stab Hall, but the audience gets to her first, pulling out their own weapons. "This is for 'Schindler's List'!" exclaims a Hassidic Jew. You'll have to hear for yourself what film Hall ruined for the Pope.
(When I saw "Scary Movie", there was a moron waving a laser pointer across the screen during certain scenes -- the first time I've encountered this particular brand of rudeness at a local theatre. Intriguingly, they stopped doing it after the scene I've just described. Coincidence?)
Not all the jokes are winners, though, and "Scary Movie" is hamstrung by following the plot of "Scream" a little too closely; greater variation would have made for a funnier, more dynamic film. Some of the humor is rather tired -- the gag of giving the characters cutesy, referential names ("Buffy" Gilmore) was even done already in "Scream 3". And sometimes "Scary Movie" just doesn't know when enough is enough, like the running gag about Ray (Shawn Wayans) being a closet homosexual.
Furthermore, whereas the truly great spoofs set you up with an obvious joke, then knock you down by taking it one step further, "Scary Movie" is often content to go only halfway. A parody of the confession scene from "The Blair Witch Project", for example, is an awful lot like every other "Blair Witch" parody of the past year.
No doubt the most controversial aspect of "Scary Movie" will be the sheer explicitness of many jokes. Remember two years ago, when the "franks and beans" scene in "There's Something About Mary" was considered groundbreaking? Well, there's a "franks and beans" scene about every fifteen minutes here, although for the most part they're pretty amusing, fortunately. Consequently, parents may want to be wary of letting younger children attend "Scary Movie". It strikes me as a movie for strictly high school age at minimum, and even that might be pushing it.
Amongst the cast, the only real standout is newcomer Anna Faris, playing Sidney -- er, Cindy Campbell, succeeding impressively at portraying the virginal heroine while uttering and engaging in sheer filth. It's almost eerie. Otherwise, the castmembers are basically just vehicles for the jokes. There aren't characters here, just ciphers and cliches.
Yes indeed, "Scary Movie" is plotless, crude, and possessed of mostly marginal performances -- all the things film critics are supposed to abhor. But did I laugh my ass off anyway? You bet I did. Do I recommend "Scary Movie"? God help me, yes.
Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at The Popcorn Gallery, http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/ScaryMovie.html
_______________________________________________________________________ / Shannon Patrick Sullivan | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \ | shannon@mun.ca | are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde | \___________________________|__________________________________________/ | Popcorn Gallery Movie Reviews www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies.html | | Doctor Who: A Brief History of Time (Travel) /drwho.html |
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