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Dan Owen reviews
UCI, Trafford Centre
- Cert:
- Running time: 89 minutes
- Year: 2000
- Released: 8th September 2000
- Widescreen Ratio : 2.35:1
- Rating: 3/10
Scary Moviemarks the cinematic comeback of the “spoof movie”, this timelampooning the recent trend in post-modern slasher flicks, such asScreamandI Know What You Did Last Summer.Already its box-office success ensures a sequel, and perhaps another upsurgein the spoof genre following turgid efforts post-“Naked Gun 2”.
But it’s very hard to see why! “Scary Movie” is not only not very funny,it’s also not very scary – so fails on both counts. It’s a spoof that almostmakes Mel Brooks‘ “Robin Hood: Mean In Tights” look like a masterpiece! Theproblems are very simple; its targets are obvious, its gags are obvious, itrelies too heavily on badtaste, it has no likeable characters, and the plotis a poor scene-by-scene reworking of “Scream”.
Put simply – “Scary Movie” is just plain lazy. Its characters are stolenfrom “Scream” (Cindy, Doofy, Gail Hailstorm, etc), the plot is mostlydirectly stolen from “Scream”, and it ‘re-enacts’ scenes from “Blair Witch”and Sixth Senseto supposedly hilarious effect. But it’s not hilarious inthe slightest – it’s just apeing superior movies.
There’s a serious lack of invention and wit to counteract the simplisticspoofing, and when things get stagnant they just rely on gross-out humour.The worst offender is a head-impalement involving a penis in a toiletcubicle – mainly because there is absolutely no reason for that scene toexist! The writers just lazily thought they’d ‘re-enact’ the knife/cubiclescene fromScream 2but… er… with a penis. That’s the kind of level we’re at here, everyone…
Don’t get me wrong. Bad-taste humour can work in films (watch “There’sSomething About Mary”), but when it’s at the expense of logic and lacks anykind of wit, it’s simply a childish exercise from uncreative minds. “ScaryMovie” is a pretty dismal effort and will reaffirm beliefs that “Airplane!”and “Naked Gun” still can’t be bettered. The sad fact is that “Scary Movie”doesn’t even try and be anything other than a by-the-numbers re-telling of“Scream” with pastiches of various other movies jammed into proceedings. Thefew good moments are in the trailer (all of them, trust me!) and the rest isjust purile and desperate material. If they weren’t lampooning ahigh-profile genre, this would deservedly be a straight-to-video release.
Some have said that “Scary Movie” should hammer final nail in the slashergenre… but I doubt it, because this feeble effort doesn’t even have thecreativity of “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” ! Instead, itscontent could setback the spoof genre. Its unbelievable success (based purely on theadmittedly chucklesome trailers) should ensure imitators jumping on thebandwagon — and I can only hope they don’t imitate the crude level ofhumour. They should do themselves a favour and rewatch “Airplane!” or“Hot Shots 2” to see how it should be done.
Review copyright © Dan Owen, 2000.E-mail Dan Owen
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.