Scary Movie 2 (2001) Review

Scary Movie 2 (2001) Review

 

Just like the sequel to Scream, the sequel to Scary Movie came out the very next year, but unlike Scream 2, Scary Movie 2 was not as well received as the original, and the final product was not better or even close to on-par with the first.

The opening of the film is a parody of The Exorcist, with Veronica Cartwright (who has many genre credits, including Lambert in Alien) as the possessed girl’s mother, and James Woods (also many genre credits) as the priest Father McFeely. You could say this opening, ah, takes the piss out of The Exorcist (she pees on the carpet for like a solid minute), and it hits every joke you would expect, with the puking part in particular being way overdone. Characters who died in Scary Movie are back in this one, further cementing the surrealism of the series, as well as the inconsequential nature of the humour. We get the college setting copied from Scream 2, and Tim Curry plays a professor studying the supernatural at Hell House (where the opening of the film took place), assisted by a quadriplegic (David Cross) who recruits Cindy, Shorty, Ray, and Brenda from the last movie, plus some new characters. They become part of an experiment, or something—who cares about the plot? It’s all a very loose framework for jokes, anyway.

Unfortunately, Scary Movie 2 is not that great. In fact, it kind of sucks. I liked it the least when I watched all of them back in the day, even when I didn’t understand half the jokes or references yet, but to re-watch it today it’s even harder to enjoy. This one has a very strong throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach to the comedy, and most of it falls right off the wall and lands on the floor with a splat. The first scene with the caretaker introduced (played by the often creepy Chris Elliot), who has a deformed right hand, goes on way too long and is not that funny to begin with, but gets really annoying really fast. There’s a weird emphasis on comedy stemming from physical disabilities, and when the caretaker comes back during the dinner scene, even the other characters are annoyed and disgusted with him, and once again it goes on way too long. It’s just not funny.

Speaking of not funny, right after the dinner scene there’s a bizarre basketball spoof that goes on and on, and I have no idea what it’s supposed to be a spoof of. This might be one of the most dated references from the whole series—and again, it’s not funny. Despite how it might seem from what I’ve said so far, there are a few good jokes, gags, and bits. An over-the-top fight between Cindy and an evil cat is a cheesy highlight, Shorty getting rolled into a joint and smoked by a giant possessed pot plant is actually pretty creative and the part I find the funniest, and Brenda and Cindy easily evading an evil skeleton is the only clever moment of fun poked at the horror genre. That’s about it, though. Way more horror movies are referenced and parodied this time around, but not as successfully.  

The jokes about Ray being gay are repeated once again, but toned down in frequency. Shorty doesn’t get enough good moments, and the new additions to the cast like Curry and Cross are given too little in the way of actual comedic bits. They’re too good for the sub-par material, anyway. Unlike Scary Movie, which had a ton of jokes packed in, Scary Movie 2 has less jokes per minute, and more misses than hits. Remember how I said it turns into The Matrix for a couple minutes at the end of the first one? Well this time it turns into Charlie’s Angels at the end, but it’s even worse and feels like it goes on forever. That’s a main theme, here: the jokes are dragged out to their absolute limit, and because they aren’t that funny in the first place, it makes the whole thing feel longer and more exhausting than it should have.

Scary Movie 2 is more perverted than the first movie, as well as trashier and stupider. It’s not too surprising to find that’s the case, though, when you read about how the Wayans were pressured to crank out the sequel within a totally unreasonable window of time, which led to them leaving the franchise completely after this. But, more sequels would follow, because there was more money to be made. This second one isn’t totally devoid of funny stuff, though, so I won’t recommend flat-out skipping it, but unless it’s late at night and/or you’re doing a marathon of all of them, I don’t think it’s necessary to go out of your way to watch it on its own.