DIRECTED BY: Keenen Ivory Wayans WRITTEN BY: Marlon and Shawn Wayans CAST: Anna Faris, Shannon Elizabeth, Cheri Oteri, Dave Sheridan
MPAA: Rated R for strong crude sexual humor, language, drug use and violence. Runtime: USA:112 (unrated version)
RATING: 8/10
"What's your favorite scary movie?"
Most good comedies can be recognized by a solid script with twists, turns and funny surprises. "Scary Movie" is comedy in Leslie Nielsen-style, which consists of canned satirical whacks and rough jokes tied together by slapsticks. It makes fun of practically every scary movie that has been released during the last decade: Borrowing the overall plot on an almost scene-by-scene basis, director Keenen Ivory Wayans sharpens his knives and starts cutting away at characters and situations. He then throws in sliced-and-diced pieces from I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scream 2, Election, The Blair Witch Project, Titanic/Amistad, The Sixth Sense, The Matrix, The Usual Suspects, The Exorcist and probably a few others into a colorful and sometimes crude mix.
''Scary Movie'' peaks pretty early when a bodacious high school student Drew Becker (Carmen Electra, who cheerfully toys with her image) making popcorn when the phone rings. A voice on the other end inquires what her favorite scary movie. Frightened she looks around and then at the table. On it she sees: a gun, a grenade, a condom and a banana. Naturally she chooses the banana. Soon, she's running through sprinklers in her underwear with a masked man in pursuit. She then sees two traffic signs. One says ''Safety,'' the other says ''Death.'' She obviously knows the rules of a slasher movie and chooses "Death". The next day, her murder is big news at the local high school, and pushy reporter Gale Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri) is shoving her mike into the faces of the glazed teens and shrieking at her cameraman while trying to harvest material for a sequel to her bestseller ''You're Dead, I'm Rich.'' Meanwhile, cute and innocent Cindy (Anna Faris) begins to worry that the murder might have something to do with a man she and her friends accidentally killed last Halloween. Her closest pals, Buffy (Shannon Elizabeth) Brenda (Regina Hall), and her boyfriend Bobby (Jon Abrahams), try to convince her otherwise. But the killer is soon stalking her, and not even the efforts of Deputy Dufy (Dave Sheridan) can save the day. The whole thing ends with a "Wild Things" epilogue.
Ever since ''Friday the 13th,'' ''Halloween,'' and ''The Evil Dead,'' the genre has rested on a solid, if inexplicable, base of teens rushing to dark, lonely places where they know violent murders occur. And director Wayans portrays their uncovered stupidity, primitive dialogue through ironysing every rule of scary movies -- every cliche of the horny teen horror genre, the teenage students played by actors in their 20s and early 30s, the sex kittens, and fringe characters like the student pothead and the doofus cop.
"Scary Movie" proves to be the kind of film that will offend the cultivated elderly audience and leave just about everyone else laughing until tears run down their cheeks. However, the films is far from perfect. The most obvious element is that "Scary Movie" requires that the viewer is familiar with the movies it so hard tries to parodieses. But even then you are not guarantee. Only about 40% of the jokes in Scary Movie work. The movie is a strange combination of bright satirical remarks and unbearably stupid jokes. It moves from clever parallels to farts and body fluids and back again in a second. There are a lot of crude moments, and some that are simply too dumb to generate a response. However, considering the sheer quantity of material that is thrown at us, even a gigantic failure rate represents a lot of laughs. The film has a significantly higher laugh quotient at the beginning than near the end, the satire is sharper, the jokes funnier. During the final half-hour there are several noticeable dead spots, when there is no laughing in the theatre, just an awkward silence. In addition it is absolutely necessary to remember that "Scream" was also a slight parody on the slasher films as well. And so "Scary Movie" becomes at times a pushy parody on a parody on a parody, which is kind of unnecessary.
The question facing the target audience for ''Scary Movie'' is whether the funny bits will be enough of a payoff for sitting through the tedious stuff between them. Many have written angry remarks about the risky content of this film -- the discriminating "gay humor", the disturbing remarks on culture and art. This is very unfortunate. I believe that "Scary Movie" doesn't take anything too seriously, including itself. Being somehow provoked by this movie is completely unnecessary. I admit that it does push too hard at times and often crosses the line of decency and good taste, but the laughs are coming in a row - non stop and that's a sign of a successful comedy. And speaking for myself -- this is certainly my favorite scary movie in a very long time.
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