Scary Movie 3: Episode I - Lord of the Brooms Review
by Van Roberts (zardoz AT ebicom DOT net)November 14th, 2003
No, the new "Scary Movie" sequel "Scary Movie 3" (*** out of ****) doesn't scare up half as many laughs as the original "Scary Movie." Neither does it raunch out to the ultra-extremes of "Scary Movie 2." If you laughed aloud at the first two "Scary Movies," you'll probably howl just as hard but in fewer places and for different reasons. Initially, Miramax made "Scary Movie" to lampoon the cliches of slasher movies in general and "Scream" in particular. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans never planned a sequel. Check out the original "SM" poster. 'No Mercy. No Shame. No Sequel.' Surprisingly, "SM" raked in so many millions that a sequel became mandatory. In the hastily wrought follow-up, the Wayans Brothers parodied haunted house movies in general and the Owen Wilson horror flop remake of "The Haunting" in particular. They should have stuck with slasher sagas. The cliches of haunted house horror movies don't lend themselves as readily to the ridicule that assails slasher movie cliches. Moreover, Hollywood has cranked out far more slasher than haunted house flicks. Not only did the "Scary Movie" franchise lose its reason for existence, i.e., skewering slasher movies, but also they sacrificed a treasure trove of material from slasher movies to exploit. Although "Scary Move 3" doesn't send up slasher movies, it mercilessly pokes fun at horror movies that coined big bucks at the box office. If you haven't seen big-screen blockbusters like "Signs," "The Sixth Sense," "8-Mile," "The Ring," "The Others," and "The Matrix," you may find yourself wondering what is so funny?
"Scary Movie 3" differs in other ways from its outrageous antecedents. The Motion Picture Association of America impaled both "Scary Movie" (2000) and "Scary Movie 2" (2001) on R-ratings, while they gave the slightly more sanitized "Scary Movie 3" a benign PG-13 rating. Principally, "SM3" bypasses scenes depicting the use of illegal drugs and grossed-out gags about sexual body fluids. Furthermore, statistics accentuate the difference. "Scary Movie" spouted the F word at least 20 times, and "SM 2" uttered it as many as 26 times. Comparatively, "SM 3" blurts out the F word only once! Interestingly enough, "Scary Movie" used the S word 29 times; "SM 2" used it 26 times, and "SM 3" used it 21 times. Keenen Ivory Wayans of "I'm Gonna Get You Sucka" fame directed the first two "Scary Movies," and he didn't push the envelope on social issues & themes as much as eviscerate it. After the whirlwind production schedule of the uneven, but entertaining "SM 2," Wayans bade good-bye to the franchise his brothers and he had created.
Brilliantly, Miramax replaced Wayans with David Zucker. Along with Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, David forged the movie spoof genre in the1980s with "Airplane." Zucker followed up "Airplane" with "Top Secret," starring Val Kilmer, and then helmed the insanely funny first and third Leslie Nielsen entries in "The Naked Gun" trilogy. Comparatively, "Scary Movie 3" contains only half as many of the usually tasteless and offensive jokes, and the comedy doesn't seem quite as weak. Okay, they make fun of the lethal videotape in "The Ring" by showing a bare-bottomed guy sitting down on 'the ring' or getting up off it. The another difference between "SM 2" and "SM 3" is Wayans mocked current social ideas, such as the radical ideology of some handicapped people, while Zucker aims for the funny bone, for the sake of amusement without any need to espouse an ideology.
Actresses Anna Faris of "The Hot Chick" and Regina Hall of "Malibu's Most Wanted" are the only survivors from the first two "Scary Movies." In the previous "Scary Movies," Faris played Cindy Campbell, a vacuous brunette "Scream" queen based loosely on Neve Campbell. In "SM 3," Faris turns blond to play a TV journalist modeled on the Naomi Watts heroine in "The Ring." Like Watts' character, Cindy raises a young boy, her nephew Cody (newcomer Drew Mikuska), who carbon copies the omniscient urchin in the Bruce Willis chiller "The Sixth Sense." Literally, in one of the film's running jokes, Cindy (Anne Faris) keeps forgetting to open the door for Cody when she picks him up from school. Realizing her error too late after she has driven away and left him at school, she slings her car into reverse and slams backwards into him as he charges toward her. Poor Cody goes flying through the air like a football. Not only can Cody tell the future, but also he becomes the target of any flying implements. Meanwhile, Regina plays Brenda Meeks, Cody' s teacher, and Cindy's chum. Sadly, one of these two survivors dies before fade-out. Anyway, Cindy investigates an urban legend about a mysterious, supernatural videotape that reputedly kills the viewer seven days after they watch it. Cindy tries to convince her boss to let her cover the story, but he has no faith in the story as a rating winner.
The second major "SM 3" plot concerns former-priest-turned-farmer Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen of "Hot Shots") who discovers crop signs in his cornfields. Seen from above, the crop sign near Tom's farm spells out: ATTACK HERE with an arrow pointed at his house. At the same time that Tom confronts the mystery of the crop signs, his younger brother George (Simon Rex) dreams of being a rapper like Eminem. Predictably, the bubble-headed aliens arrive, and the dead girl with slimy hair and a cadaverous body emerges from the videotape to do battle with our heroes and heroines. Director David Zucker keeps the jokes, gags, one-liners, and slapstick flying thick and fast with no let-up during this 81-minute epic. The incredibly coherent script by Pat Proft of the "Hot Shots!" and "Naked Gun" movies and Kevin Smith of "Clerks" and "Chasing Amy," does a better-than-average job of integrating the crop-signs plot with the deadly videotape plot. Leslie Neilson excels in a cameo as a paranoid U.S. President who insists aliens are masquerading as humans. .After making one of the worst films of his career--"The Boss's Daughter," director David Zucker has redeemed himself with "Scary Movie 3," a spoof that is not only pretty funny, but also has set a new record for box office admissions in October.
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