"Scary Movie 2"
Last year, Keenen Ivory Wayans and his brothers Marlon and Shawn promised us "No sequel!" as part of the advert blurb for their enormously popular "Scary Movie." But, a domestic take of $200 million is apparently enough to make them to go back on their word and the result is "Scary Movie 2."
I wish the Wayans had kept their pledge, after spending an interminable 85 minutes suffering through "Scary Movie 2." If you are a fan of urine, feces and semen jokes, you will probably like this bomb. You get ample, even copious, amounts of each. For more discerning filmgoers (i.e. anyone over the mental age of 12), be warned, this second installment to the new Wayans franchise lacks the rapid-fire humor of the original. The first flick made fun of the modern horror film genre, like "Airplane!" with one gag after another coming at you. If you didn't like one joke, you just had a few seconds to wait for the next. Overall, they hit a lot more than they missed.
With "Scary Movie 2" the Wayans brothers decided to forgo the one-gag-after-another formula and, instead, use a plot-driven story that is mainly a parody of the recent mediocre horror movie, "The Haunting." Sure, there are a whole bunch of other movies and pop culture references throughout - "The Exorcist," "The Amityville Horror," "Dracula," "Dirty Harry," "Mission Impossible 2," "Charlie's Angels," "Hannibal" and those noisy basketball commercials all get their due. The problem with "Scary Movie 2" is it spoofs a movie that, if you saw the original "The Haunting," is really a parody of that classic horror flick. You would think that the seven credited writers could come up with a better idea.
Coupling the lame plot line of "The Haunting" with buckets of bodily fluids makes this venture very unfunny, indeed. The opening "Exorcist" parody, before the credits, turns out to be the funniest part of "Scary Movie 2," thanks to an outrageous twist on the Father Merrin character by James Woods. His unholy holy man made me feel that we might be in for a continuation of the first flick. Then the credits roll and we get the aforementioned buckets. All the original characters are here, but they are simply going through the motions. The filmmakers had something going the first time around, but they lost it here. Even a foul-mouthed parrot named Polly isn't funny, and I love foul-mouthed birds.
Techs are probably OK. I was too numbed by the non-humor of "Scary Movie 2" to notice. You're better off renting the original and getting yourself a pizza with what you'll save by not going to see "Scary Movie 2." They said, the first time, "no sequel." I wish they kept their promise. I give it a D.
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