Scary Movie 3: Episode I - Lord of the Brooms Review
by Robin Clifford (robin AT reelingreviews DOT com)October 24th, 2003
"Scary Movie 3"
What do you expect of a trequel to a movie that made fun of a movie that was a parody in and of itself? Well, if it's a movie that the originating Wayans brothers are NOT involved in and one that "Airplane" auteur David Zucker is, then that movie is "Scary Movie 3."
Keeping to the formula developed in the original and funny "Scary Movie," Zucker and company mix in a dose of their own manic movie shenanigans and come up with a fairly fast paced romp that loses steam after an hour but is, still and mercifully, only around 80 minutes long. This is, I guess, a good thing since the filmmakers are hard pressed to put anything original or fresh into this now worn out franchise.
This time around the movies being parodied are "Signs," "The Ring," "8 Mile," "The Others" and more as wannabe-a-hardnosed-reporter Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris hunts down the source of a mysterious video tape that, when watched, portends death to the viewer in seven days. Meanwhile, a fallen preacher, Tom (Charlie Sheen), is presented with a strange phenomenon in his cornfield - a huge alien crop circle that spells out "Attack Here" with an arrow pointing at the former priest's home.
At first, the laughs come out loud for the signature opening with two babes (Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson), dressed as parochial school girls, left alone in an otherwise empty house. One screams in mortal terror that they are "in a big house with only one phone!" Things continue in this slapstick manner for the run of the film with each of the targeted movies parodied and made fun of in sometimes laugh aloud moments but mostly with grins as the reaction to the antics.
There is a big ensemble cast associated with "SM3," including Leslie Nielson as the goofy American president who is a cross between Llloyd Bridges in the "Hot Shots" movies and the actors own Frank Drebin from the "Naked Gun" series.
"Scary Movie 3" is certainly a heck of a lot funnier than its predecessor, the dreadfully unfunny "SM2," but, because it does not have the advantage of being fresh, new and original, it falls short of the first. Still, I enjoyed the laughs when they happened and I give it a B-.
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