Scary Movie Review
by "Alex Ioshpe" (ioshpe AT online DOT no)November 6th, 2000
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)
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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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