Scary Movie ---- ***1/2 (out of 5) (2000)
Cast: Anna Faris, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Cheri Oteri, Shannon Elizabeth
Director(s): Keenen Ivory Wayans
Screenwriter(s): Phil Beauman, Jason Friedburg, Buddy Johnson, Aaron Seltzer, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans
Released on: July 7, 2000
Reviewed on: June 14, 2004
Rated: R - for strong crude sexual humor, language, nudity, drug use, and violence
It's rare to find a film such as this where the writers (all seven of them) have the balls to push the envelope as far as it can go before the MPAA brands their work with the dreaded NC-17 rating. The writers of SCARY MOVIE must have gained some hefty bragging rights by stretching the limits of the R-rating as far as they can go. Consequentially, the film often hits the viewers with a wave of idiot humor that sometimes teeters on the edge of an overdose in its efforts to put smiles on our faces. But just as often, there are jokes that leave a solid impact. Even if you're someone who's only remotely familiar with 90's slasher flicks, SCARY MOVIE in any way, shape, or form is gut-splittingly hilarious.
Honestly, providing a plot outline on a film that is based solely off of spoofs and gags seems to be nothing more than unnecessary tedium. But I guess it's essential for me to write out some sort of a story to invoke mention of a few of the horror flicks that SCARY MOVIE brutally and blatantly slams on more than one occasion. A small group of high school couples are shocked by the recent murder of their classmate (played by Carmen Electra). One of the girls in the group, Cindy Campbell, is soon the next one to be stalked. She starts receiving notes in class and discovers that the killer is aware of what happened on Halloween one year ago when she and her friends ran over a man and dumped his body in the river. The murders of her friends soon follow, and the film "climaxes" in a complete mockery of the ending to SCREAM, exaggerating on the twists and turns that the final scenes were littered with. Before the last spoof in the film even occurs, there are countless references to movies like Scream, Halloween, The Matrix, THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. Almost all of them strike each of the films' low points directly where it hurts and never cease in peppering these scenes with over-the-top sexual encounters and mindless violence to poke fun at slasher films.
I can't even begin to mention the onslaught of humor that the Wayans brothers managed to cram into a short, 88-minute timeslot. The film has almost every type of humor that you could ask for in a comedy flick. It has Carmen Electra mocking herself by stripping down to bra and panties, a reporter having sex with a retarded police officer to get a story, a man getting impaled through the head by a penis, a high-schooler ejaculating so hard that his semen pins his girlfriend to the ceiling, and a serial killer in a mask smoking a bong with a group of teenaged stoners. Yeah, I know exactly what you're thinking, and that's only a small portion of the good scenes.
I've seen some funny movies in the past that have several laugh-out-loud moments but never a comedy that delivers laughs in such hard and plentiful amounts. The film is hardly ever dull, doesn't show sympathy to any horror movie, and leaves its mark with slasher parodies that seem designed as if to provoke a response by the makers of those films. The result that you get when you combine a variety of comedy that ranges from smart to lowbrow to tasteless and throw it in a blender is a funny, insightful, extreme, and relentless comedy extravaganza that was unleashed upon the world with the modest title of SCARY MOVIE.
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