In the movie Scary Movie (which, frankly, should have (It should be called "Scary Movie 6," but whatever) there are some good jokes every now and then. Like the one where Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans) stands up in front of the church congregation to declare he's not gay, and then proceeds to list an incredibly detailed list of all the homosexual acts he won't commit. Or, like, the one where Jack (Cameron Robert Stock), Jack's love interest who's so boring he must be a killer (he's constantly compared to Ted Bundy), shows up at a party with his girlfriend, the nervous Sarah (Olivia Rose Keegan), and her Wednesday-like sister, Tuesday (Savannah Lee Nassif), and the three try to get invited—like the vampire Remmick did in The Sinners—in this case, by playing a traditional version of "Movin' On Up" from The Jeffersons on banjo. Or the one where Sydney Park plays a high school student so politically sensitive that when Ghostface stabs her on the subway, a disturbed passenger calls the victim "she," to which Park yells that "they/them" are her correct pronouns—at which point the disturbed passenger gets so annoyed that he starts stabbing her, too.
But there are also jokes that work better in theory than in practice. Like the one where Shorty (Marlon Wayans), that obnoxious stoned slacker, ends up slumped on a chair in a flooded area—a parody of "Get Out" that becomes the premise for an anime fantasy where he sings a variation of "Golden" built around the pleasures of marijuana. sounds (It's funny, but it doesn't quite hit the mark.) Or the one where we seem to be watching a trailer for "Michael," and the great Kenan Thompson plays Michael Jackson, which is a bit weird, but the joke turns out to be that it's a trailer for... "Jermaine." It's a funny idea that doesn't quite work. Or take Doofy Gilmore (Dave Sheridan), a lisping bore so filthy that he washes himself with his own saliva. He's such an ineffective and annoying character that you feel relieved when he's killed off.
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Scary Movie 6 features a parody poster and tagline, "Michael," poking fun at the child molestation allegations against Michael Jackson: "Touching the hearts of fans around the world.".
At its best, the Scary Movie comedy—like The Naked Gun, Airplane!, and all the other parodies that have kept the genre alive for half a century—cleverly exploits exaggeration , inflating cliches you never knew existed, taking tired tropes and turning them into glorious, ridiculous bloopers. What makes a Scary Movie sequel funny, and not just recycled? It's hard to put into words, but you'll understand it when you feel the humor. You'll understand it when you laugh out loud.
I didn't laugh out loud too many times at Scary Movie, which is considerably less funny than last year's Naked Gun reboot, though it still has the unbridled energy of a rabid-dog comedy. Most of the jokes feel more forced than funny. And perhaps that's because the film doesn't feel like it's offering anything new about what's going on between the lines in the Scream genre. There have been seven Scream films; this is the sixth Scary Movie, the first of which came out 26 years ago (and that was a Scream parody). The new film, which pokes fun at itself for being a "reboot," is as dense with old, layered characters and new ones as the most convoluted, audience-struggling Scream sequel. The film is chock-full of parodies of the genre's history, but that makes it more tedious than engaging. It's an overwrought satirical party that has become so metaphorical that it becomes boring.
These films have always been all-encompassing genre parodies, which in the case of horror means Scary Movie could have been fertile ground for experimentation. I loved the references to The Sinners, but why didn't that film play a more significant role? Scary Movie 5 came out 13 years ago; a lot of horror has been left behind. So why not expand the film with juicy digs at Midsommar or The Conjuring films? Scary Movie does have a brief parody of Substance (which somehow devolves into an inappropriate joke about the Epstein affair), but it's presented primarily as a family franchise riding the wave of the Scream franchise's success. The screenplay was written by Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Craig Wayans, and Rick Alvarez (the film even jokes about how many Wayans there are in the family), and they've latched onto the Ghostface saga as if it were the only thing that matters in horror. The killer is constantly appearing, as in the Scream films, and this maintains a tone of comic aggression. But the brutal violence overwhelms the wit.
As if it needed explaining, the Scream films have always been self-parodies (that was true of the first film in 1996), and by this point they'd become mega-parodies of their own decadence. So Scary Movie, by satirizing this quality, seems to simply add another layer to the cake of overkill and trash. Teyana Taylor, sitting at a bar in the most revealing gold dress, talks to the killer in the opening scene, but the real joke is that she's playing a super-sassy version of herself, complete with Oscar jokes. Perhaps the reason the film doesn't spend more time satirizing the nuances of modern horror (even though we do see M3GAN dancing) is because its real other theme is vulgarity. The Wayans brothers are all about sex jokes, whether it's the jiggly purple butt plug carried by lustful character Ruby Snowber or the steamy oral sex session she receives from her boyfriend (Gregg Wayans) that mimics rolling a joint.
Anna Faris and Regina Hall have starred in every film in the series (except for the unsuccessful "Scary Movie 5"), and both return with hilarious abandon. Faris's Cindy Campbell is now the franchise's rallying cry, while Hall's Brenda Meeks is a self-proclaimed "badass black mom." Kim Wayans has a few fine moments as an incredibly hostile ICU nurse. The climax, in which more characters play Ghostface than you can count, features numerous uncredited cameos that I won't reveal. But that joke has gotten old. "Scary Movie," which is expected to find a large audience this weekend, shows that a sitcom can be successful even when it pokes fun at its own repetitiveness.
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