Scary Movie 3

“Scary Movie 3,” released in 2003, understands the thought of a parody but not the thought of a ridicule. Roger Ebert noted, “It clicks off several popular movies ("Signs," "The Sixth Sense," "The Matrix," "8 Mile," "The Ring") and recycles scenes from them through a spoofalator, but it's feeding off these movies, not skewering them. The average issue of Mad magazine contains significantly smarter movie satire, because Mad goes for the vulnerable elements and "Scary Movie 3" just wants to quote and kid.”

Just look at what it parodies from “8 Mile.” Ebert admitted, “Eminem is talented and I liked his movie, but he provides a target that "Scary Movie 3" misses by a mile.” His Eminem satire is played by Simon Rex, whose lines mainly have a mirror image of what Eminem did in the original movie, in a painful way. He throws up in the bathroom (on someone else), he does a rap battle onstage with rapper Fat Joe, he prevents blame by mocking himself as white, he puts on his hood from his jacket and it looks like a Ku Klux Klan hood, etc. This is parody, not satire, and nothing on Eminem is credited.

Same with the crop farm from “Signs,” where farmer Tom Logan, played by Martin Sheen’s son, Charlie “Winning” Sheen, finds a big crop circle with an arrow pointing to his house and the message “Attack here.” That’s just the start. Why not something on how the movie has a prolong silence as long as it can? The scene with his dying wife, played by the hot Denise Richards, who is being kept alive by the truck that has her crushed against a tree, is painfully contrived.

“The Ring” spoof is hardly different from “The Ring” itself. Put in the VHS, answer the phone, you’re threatened to die in a week. “The Sixth Sense” parody is funnier, as a crazed Cody, played by Drew Mikuska, goes through the movie ruthlessly predicting everyone’s secrets. As funny as it is, nothing is built from that. Then there’s an uncomfortable scene at the home of news reader Cindy Campbell, where a drooling priest, played by SNL impressionist, Darrell Hammond, shows up to be a babysitter for Cody.

The movie has so many famous and somewhat famous celebrities, however two of them actually are funny and get them. It’s in the beginning of the movie, where the hot Jenny McCarthy and “Baywatch” drop dead gorgeous babe Pamela Anderson, as Ebert puts it, “take the dumb blond shtick about as far as it can possibly go, while their push-up bras do the same thing in another department.”

Other cameos include two of the funniest comedians ever, Queen Latifah and Eddie Griffin, along with William Forsythe, Peter Boyle, singer Macy Gray, the late George Carlin, rappers Ja Rule and Master P, and the late Leslie Nielsen, the king of parodies played the President. However, to what advantage? The movie was directed by David Zucker, who along with his brother Jerry and Jim Abrahams somewhat created the genre with “Airplane!,” which I have yet to see. Maybe he is not the problem. Maybe the problem is that the genre is over, done and dead. “Scream” looked like it pointed in a new and funnier direction – the smart satire – but “Scary Movie 3” puts it right back to where it was again. Ebert ended his review by saying, “It's like it has its own crop circle, with its own arrow pointing right at itself.”

Like I have already stated in my reviews on the first two movies, don’t watch this franchise. This one was ok compared to the second one since it wasn’t nearly as gross as the second one was, but it’s still just as painful to watch. The parody genre is dead in movies currently, but there are still hilarious parodies online and on TV. Ironically, this was the first “Scary Movie” I saw because I was in high school and it was free On Demand, so I checked it out and liked it, but looking back now, I can see how bad it was.

Well, as much as I hate to admit it, they did not stop here. They made another sequel, which we will look at tomorrow in the painful continuation in the reviews of the “Scary Movie Franchise.”