SCARY MOVIE 2

Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans

Starring Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Ferris, Tori Spelling, and Chris Elliot

It was a high falutin’ movie critic’s worst nightmare: the original Scary Movie. This summer, it became a reoccurring dream as Scary Movie 2 burst onto movie screens nationwide during the Fourth of July weekend. After all, what better way to celebrate America than with some good old-fashioned urination, defecation, and masturbation jokes.

It is safe to say that the first Scary Movie was nothing short of a brilliant satire. Anyone who didn’t like the first movie either A.) has no sense of humor B.) is too dumb to get the jokes C.) takes themselves way too seriously or D.) all of the above.

Scary Movie 2 offers more satire and crude humor around a plot that loosely parodies (among others) the format of the 1998 horror film The Haunting, as Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Ray (Damon Wayans) and Cindy (Anna Ferris) spend a weekend in a haunted castle in order to receive an “A” from their evil professor.

The returning characters are joined by some new faces, namely Chris Elliot who plays a demented caretaker with a deformed hand that he uses extensively while cooking, and Tori Spelling (in a completely dispensable role) as a naughty teenager looking for some ghostly loving, who gets her wish in a wild scene which parodies Hollow Man.

The second Scary Movie starts off much like the first with a well-done parody. In this case it’s a horror fans wet dream of a film that is the brunt of the joke, The Exorcist. The scene ends with massive amounts of vomit spewed, and is one of the film’s biggest laughs. This sets the film’s tone: a few big laughs and smart parodies mismashed around a lot of crude humor and dozens of poorly done parodies that leave the audience scratching their heads.

While the first Scary Movie managed to cleverly poke fun at the plethora of teen horror films of the past few years, the second parodies dozens of films not necessarily in the horror genre. Even the most ardent film buff will have trouble identifying exactly who and what is being made fun of in Scary Movie 2. A short list of films that is parodied includes Friday the 13th, American Pie, Ghostbusters, Paulie, Dirty Harry, What Lies Beneath, Rocky, Twister, Mission Impossible 2, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Dude, Where’s My Car? And if you look closely enough you’ll even catch the Save The Last Dance joke. The parodies are thrown at such a rapid fire pace that they become hard to digest. For instance, was a trash talking parrot that was a take off of The Weakest Link host Anne Robinson really necessary? And if it was, did it really need to be used a half dozen times throughout the film?

The writers (all seven of them…yes, seven) would have been better-suited poking fun at a few movies in a smarter, more recognizable way. Instead the movie spirals out of control with its constant barrage of attempting to make fun of anything and everything. It’s as if Scary Movie 2 left nothing on the editing room floor, and simply put every single idea that popped into their heads onto the screen. The magnificent seven writers seem to adhere to the mantra that anything that references pop culture in any sort of way is automatically funny.

While Scary Movie 2’s weaknesses lie in its excess of parodies, and virtually no semblance of pacing or plot, its strengths lie in still being able to provide a few big laughs. The only way it succeeds is by going to ridiculous extremes in its jokes. Whether it’s a huge joint rolling up Shorty and smoking him, or Chris Elliot stirring up the mashed potatoes with what’s left of his hideous stubble of a hand, the movie succeeds in being humorously over the top in many of its big jokes. The problem lies in tying the jokes together, and making Scary Movie 2 more than just a collection of R Rated Mad TV skits cleverly disguised as a movie.