If no one has been able to guess what franchise I am talking about, I'm talking about the spoof franchise that was supposed to bring back the spoof genre, but only killed it more, the "Scary Movie franchise." I know that maybe it doesn't count to review these for Halloween time, but since they spoof horror movies, I guess they count.
As much as I want to not look at this, I cannot prolong this any longer. Let's get started with the first entry in the series, "Scary Movie," released in 2000.
At the very beginning of the movie, the hot "Baywatch babe," Carmen Electra is being harassed by someone disguised as Ghostface, who makes himself sound so raspy that she doesn't know who it is when he asks her name. Why does he want to know her name? "Scream" made it popular that slasher villains want to know who they are peeping at, but this villain is not spying on her through her window, but is checking her photos out in the latest Playboy magazine. When the chase starts, and the killer stabs his knife into her chest, an implant comes out. The beginning actually looks promising between Carmen Electra and the Ghostface impersonator that everyone thinks that "Scary Movie" will be the one to bring back the spoof movies. Sadly, like every other horrible spoof movies (which I haven't seen any of besides this franchise, thankfully), "Scary Movie" is a comedy struggling on the edge, a film so dry, painful and childish that the comedy is bad and everything becomes disjointed before you get past the first half hour.
The story is basically a combination of the "Scream" trilogy and the "I Know What You Did Last Summer" movies, with little references of "The Matrix" and "The Blair Witch Project" inserted in. Cindy Campbell (obviously referencing Neve Campbell from the "Scream" series), played by Anna Faris, is your average high school girl with a secret. She and her friends (obvious unintentional) run over a man (Craig Bruhnanski) as he was crossing the screet and they were speeding recklessly down the road on Halloween. He is alive, but they don't see it, especially after they accidentally knock him out by throwing a beer bottle. To make sure no one notices, they dump his body into the river, saying they will never mention it again. One year later, their fellow student Drew (Electra) is killed. Who did it? Was it the man they thought they killed? Throughout this beginning segment, there is one nice funny line said by Cindy, where she says, "I'm glad this isn't a movie, otherwise they'd have someone like Jennifer Love Hewitt play my part."
As you might have guessed, no one is really paying attention to the plot, or whoever is watching this would instead see the movies that this garbage is parodying. What is it that we actually like? David Keyes stated in his review, "Certainly not the jokes, most of which are delivered at a tone so raunchy and disgusting that, as the terrific Nathaniel R. Atcheson said in his recent review, they drop “the limbo bar a notch” in comparison to something like “There’s Something About Mary.” One scene in particular leaves me puzzled; no, not because I don’t comprehend it, but because I don’t understand how anyone could have gotten away with it at an R rating."
This is what he's talking about: Ray, one of the friends who was there during the Halloween accident, played by Shawn Wayans of the Wayans family, says he has to go to the bathroom when he's at the local theater watching "Shakespeare in Love." Remember the beginning of "Scream 2" when Omar Epps went into the stall, put his head close to the wall when he heard something from the other stall, and was stabbed in the head? Take that part, put a hole in the wall, and put a man's private part through it instead of a knife? What was the reason for that? Has the MPAA now become soft when it comes to love scenes when it's only there to be funny? An interesting fact: "Eyes Wide Shut" almost got an NC-17 because of the love scenes where you didn't see anything!
Keyes mentioned, "I’ve always maintained the belief that spoofs are essentially juvenile comedies that are more interested in poking fun at basic idiocy and rather than their own source material, and though “Scary Movie” tries to do the opposite, it doesn’t have any legitimate desire." The Wayans brothers said they watch so many different popular movies for them to think up their spoofs, but where is the inspiration? In one of the beginning scenes when, similar to "Scream," Cindy's boyfriend, Bobby (Jon Abrahams) climbs through her window at night, talks about their relationship, hides behind the bed when her father (Rick Ducommun) comes in, and gets out again when she doesn't want to sleep with him. As you might have guessed, teh dialogue is virtually the same (except for the talk between Cindy and her father, which gives a few nice moments as her father gives Cindy some advice on the drugs hidden in the house). Like every satire/irony movies since the birth of movies, "Scary Movie" takes movies like "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" not to satrize them, but to use their stories has ways to put together such weak and pointless humor.
This movie is so weak. I know that people probably were entertained by this vulgar and gross mess of a spoof film, but I wasn't. Except for maybe a few parts where I chuckled, but overall, this was a bad spoof film. Just don't watch it, and please heed my warning. If you do, and you end up liking it, great. Don't put your expectations too high because this didn't save spoof films.
If you thought this film would have learned its lesson, think again. Apparently this film was so successful that they decided to make sequels to it. Check in tomorrow when we look at the first sequel to the "Scary Movie Franchise."
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