Scary Movie (2000)

SCARY MOVIE (Dimension) Starring: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Jon Abrahams, Lochlyn Munro, Shannon Elizabeth, Cheri Oteri, Dave Sheridan. Screenplay: Marlon Wayans & Shawn Wayans and Phil Beauman & Buddy Johnson and Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer. Producers: Eric L. Gold and Lee R. Mayes. Director: Keenen Ivory Wayans. MPAA Rating: R (sexual situations, adult themes, drug use, profanity, brief nudity, violence) Running Time: 85 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.

SCARY MOVIE's least obvious joke -- and this is a film that never met an obvious joke it wasn't willing to beat to a slow, bloody death -- is its title. SCREAM, one of the 1990s horror films that inspired this genre parody, went into production with the working title of ... SCARY MOVIE. SCARY MOVIE, on the other hand, went into production with the working title SCREAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT I DID LAST HALLOWEEN. That title may have rolled off the tongue slightly easier than that of Shawn and Marlon Wayans' previous genre parody, DON'T BE A MENACE TO SOUTH CENTRAL WHILE DRINKING YOUR JUICE IN THE HOOD, but that ain't saying much. These particular members of the Wayans clan seem singularly fond of spelling out not just the general type of film they're sending up, but each and every individual film they're going to acknowledge within that send-up.

I'm not sure whether the entire concept of scattershot genre parody is beyond my appreciation at this point, or whether SCARY MOVIE simply made me feel like that was the case. I do know that it ended up making me cringe more often than it made me laugh. The set-up involves a group of high school students reacting to the murder of one of their classmates (Carmen Electra). Virginal heroine Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) wonders whether the killing may be related to an accident the previous year, in which Cindy and several friends hit a pedestrian in their car and disposed of the body. Her friends pooh-pooh the idea, but one by one they begin dying terrible deaths with very familiar m.o.'s. Who will be next? Cindy's sexually frustrated boyfriend Bobby (Jon Abrahams)? Her best friends Brenda (Regina Hall) and Buffy (Shannon Elizabeth), and their boyfriends Ray (Shawn Wayans) and Greg (Lochlyn Munro)? Or maybe Buffy's "slow" brother and honorary deputy Doofy (Dave Sheridan).

As much as SCARY MOVIE owes to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team in its basic structure, it may owe even more to the Farrelly brothers. Simply put, this is as breathtakingly crude and tasteless a film as you'll see without going into the curtained-off area of your local video store. It's not that some of the crude sight gags aren't funny; a few of them are worth big embarrassed chuckles. Unfortunately, far more are either lazy or get really old really fast. SCARY MOVIE boasts not one, not two, but three flatulence jokes, in addition to not one, not two, not three, etc. but at least half a dozen oral sex jokes. And that's saying nothing of the entire GLAAD protest's worth of cheap sexual orientation gags. I suspect the Wayans Brothers know their audience well enough to know that nothing will get the guffaws going better than an effeminate football player, or a butch girls' gym teacher, or a forest of overgrown pubic hair. I also know I've rarely felt as pandered to for so little playful pay-off.

When the Wayans' finally do turn their attention to gags with specific reference points -- the SCREAM trilogy, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, even an improbable nod to THE USUAL SUSPECTS -- their batting average doesn't improve much. Inevitably at least a few gags are going to hit, most of which involve the pre-title attack on Electra. Others are seemingly obligatory swipes at already-tired targets like THE SIXTH SENSE's "I see dead people" line, TITANIC's "king of the world" line, Heather's confession in THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the ubiquitous "Wassup" guys from the Budweiser ads. There's rarely any confusion over the source of any referential gag, because director Keenen Ivory Wayans will usually let a scene run on for two or three minutes of set-up before ever getting to the punch line. A film like this has to jab and move, letting its gags stand or fall without someone pointing to them and shouting, "Hey, isn't _that_ funny?"

Before SCARY MOVIE's release, several critics wondered aloud how it could satirize a film that was itself a satire of other films. The premise wasn't entirely accurate, since SCREAM was always a horror film itself, albeit a deconstruction of horror films within the genre. SCARY MOVIE's problem isn't that it tries to do things SCREAM already did better, but that it's not funny enough often enough. Perhaps if more of the humor had hovered around the margins (like the labels on a restroom condom machine) instead of over-staying its welcome (like the fate of a talkative movie theater patron), SCARY MOVIE could have felt less like a marketing hook in search of some actual comedy. It doesn't take much creativity or wit to nudge an audience with pop culture references. It just takes naming your film something obvious like SCREAM IF YOU KNOW WHAT I DID LAST HALLOWEEN.

     On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 screams of weak:  4.

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