Scary Movie (2000) Review

Scary Movie (2000) Review

 

Today I’m reviewing Scary Movie, but not the original. Well, I am reviewing the original film in the horror parody series, but not the first movie to ever be called Scary Movie. That distinction belongs to the 1991 Halloween-centered cult horror film starring John Hawkes, but maybe I’ll talk about that one another time. Scary Movie was also the original working title for a film that would later become known as Scream, which is why the Wayans Brothers, who collectively wrote, directed, and starred to varying degrees, used the title for their spoof movie. Scream served as their primary spoofing source, but several other late-90’s pop culture successes weren’t safe from their comedic talons either.

The opening is an accelerated version of how Scream begins, only every moment that used to be scary and clever is now trying to be funny. The first joke is literally a fart joke, so that should pretty quickly indicate if this will be your kind of comedy film or not. Beyond fart jokes and bits that mock Scream, there’s lots of physical comedy, exaggerated violence, quirky weird moments, and surrealism. Some of the meta moments and fourth wall breaks come off as rather strange, but I find the physical comedy to be the best and most consistently funny. It’s cheap, easy humour, but it works. The jokes are constant from beginning to end, with some pretty notable misses in regards to the smaller gags, but most of the big gags land as intended. In terms of being an actual parody, though, it’s actually kind of weak.

Scream itself was already a clever parody of the slasher genre, and made self-aware references and jokes while still being a scary whodunit, so Scary Movie is sort of a parody of a parody, only not clever. It references Scream 2 as well, and other horror movies, too, like Carrie, The Shining, and The Blair Witch Project, among others, but it also relies heavily on copying I Know What You Did Last Summer, with an extensive flashback depicting the group of characters accidentally killing a man with their car on Halloween night and vowing never to talk about it. For fans of those horror movies it might be fun to recognize where the jokes are derived from. Toward the end it suddenly becomes a parody of The Matrix, and I will give them a tiny bit of credit for parodying something that, at the time, hadn’t been overly spoofed or copied or referenced yet. But, it’s still dumb, and not as funny as the Wayans thought it was.

The characters are not really there for the audience to actually invest in, they’re just vessels for the comedy, and I don’t mind that, but it does put Scary Movie into its own box of entertainment. Sure, it’s funny, but it’s all surface level, and with some of the jokes being so specific to pop culture crazes of the time, a large amount of the humour hasn’t aged well, or is meaningless if you don’t know what the references are. I saw the first, second, third, and fourth Scary Movie all in one night for the first time when I was way too young to understand nearly all of the sex jokes, but I still found it funny because of how absurd it was (and being so naïve). Once I had actually seen the movies they were spoofing, I realized how unoriginal it was, but this first one stands out in that way the most to me.

Anna Faris plays the main character Cindy Campbell (Cindy derived from Scream main character Sidney Prescott and Campbell derived from the actress who played her, Neve Campbell). She was a relative newcomer at the time, but she does a pretty good job given the material she has to work with. My favourite character is the stoner Shorty, played by Marlon Wayans, always adding “son” to the end of his sentences and bumbling his way through every scene. The whole “wazzup?” scene with him on the phone with the killer will always be funny to me, and not just because of Shorty. When the Ghostface mask changes into a goofy, laughing, stoned-looking version of itself I always lose it. Shannon Elizabeth plays Buffy, coming hot off the heels of American Pie success a year earlier, and she plays her character quite straight, but has some pretty good scenes.

There are a few characters that don’t work for me, though, including Ray, played by Shawn Wayans, whose entire character is just doing and saying things that indicate he is homosexual, with the joke being he isn’t openly gay. There’s literally nothing else to him, and it’s one of the most-dated, most-overblown, and most-unfunny parts of the movie. Greg (Lochlyn Munro) shouts all of his lines, though is funny from time to time, but the most problematic character of all is Buffy’s handicapped brother, Doofy. Oh, yikes…he most certainly puts the “oof” in Doofy. I won’t spoil it completely (even though I don’t think it really matters), but they pull a Usual Suspects spoof ending out of nowhere, and if you’ve seen Scream you’ll get why, but it’s a bogus ending, and I never found it that funny. Don’t worry, though, it ends with one last out-of-left-field-violent-physical-comedy moment, which would later become a running gag/tradition. 

Scary Movie was a huge success when it first came out, and started a pretty lucrative franchise, as well as paved the way for many more spinoff spoofs, but looking back on it in the context of the whole franchise and being further removed from its era, it definitely isn’t the best entry. I still think it has some pretty funny parts, but also has arguably the greatest number of dated jokes, which isn’t that surprising. Still, if you like dumb comedy and want to see a funnier, more absurd version of Scream, I’d say give it a watch, or if you haven’t seen it in a long time, consider revisiting it to see how many jokes do (or don’t) hold up.