I’ve bemoaned the 1990s teen horror movie revival in my reviews of such “classics” as I Know What You Did Last Summer and Urban Legend. Scream, the film that started the revival, was was an inventive and funny movie that also managed to scare audiences at the same time. For the last five years, teen horror movies have attempted to recapture its formula with “smart” characters and “wise-to-the-clichés” scripts. All of them, including the Scream sequels, have failed miserably.
When I heard that the Wayans Brothers were going to parody the new generation of horror films, I was interested to see how it would turn out. There is plenty of material to work with and a wealth of laughs to be had, I thought. Too bad the Wayans decided to be more interested in ways to work penis jokes into the formula than concentrate on making a truly funny movie.
Scary Movie loosely follows the same plot as Scream, but veers all over the place to work in jabs at other movies like I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project, and others. Apparently, sticking to horror movies was too limiting, so the Wayans had to work in references to The Matrix, Titanic, Budweiser commercials, and a plethora of sex jokes and gutter humor.
Scary Movie half-heartedly attempts to ape the Abrahams – Zucker Brothers style of humor from films like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. Due to poor direction by Keenen Ivory Wayans, the jokes that require a subtle touch are driven home with a hammer and others are lost in the noise of drug jokes and the script’s seeming fixation on homosexual sex.
There are a few inspired moments, but they’re simply not worth sitting through the rest of the drivel to see. Scary Movie‘s lack of humor is scary.
1.5 out of 5.0 stars
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