by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Jon Abrahams, Lachlyn Munro, Chris Elliott, Cheri Oteri, Anthony Anderson
Intro:
… dumb fun done smartly.
It has been a long time since big-screen spoof movies were entertaining. Hell, it’s been a long time since spoof movies actually looked like movies. And a lot of that blame falls on the original Scary Movie (1991). While its blend of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker-style gag precision and Wayans brothers irreverent stoner comedy still holds up today as perhaps The Last Great American Spoof Movie, the encroaching influence of 2000s teen sex comedies, the sloping arc of focus that would turn things like plot, character, and even comedic sense null and void, and the launching of careers of the true murderers of the sub-genre in Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (and hearing the Wayans tell it, they built a career of garbage off the back of a film they didn’t even really work on), would spell the beginning of the end for the spoof movie.
But with the franchise back in the hands of the Wayanses, things are starting to look up for the spoof movie again.
Even with the inclusion of taglines like “every line will be crossed” and “cancel the cancel culture”, along with a character whose entire bit is overwhelming ‘wokeness’ in this film’s version of Mindy Meeks-Martin, the most shocking part of the new Scary Movie is how not-meanspirited it is. It’s still taking on all sides, but when it makes light of LGBTQ+ or race or just about anything else, it’s more “we’re all laughing at ourselves” rather than “let’s pick on the one weird kid”. The gags are still incredibly juvenile, gross, and way out of left field (you may think you’re ready for the musical number… but you’re not), but it’s all in good fun. And even if it feels less-than-sporting for certain viewers, bits are not lingered on and just make way for the next dozen quips and bodily fluids.
It helps that there’s actual focus and continuity in its writing, both as a straight comedy and as a spoof. It mainly sticks to horror fare, making for lost time with targets from the 2010s but mostly recent stuff like Weapons and The Substance and of course the latest Screams, and because the film actually remembers what happens in previous scenes, it allows for the kind of joke heightening that refuses to exist in something like a Seltzerberg production.
The pokes are generally pretty accurate to boot, pointing out the odd parts in specific films and just generally White standards for mainstream cinema, and even returns to the classic days of legitimately outdoing the films that it’s mocking. When it gets to talking smack about nostalgia baiting and legacy characters, it ends up saying a hell of a lot more than Scream 7 ever did.
The film also looks pretty damn good, which is an even bigger shocker, as director Michael Tiddes and co-writer Rick Alvarez’ previous collabs with Marlon Wayans (from the dead-in-the-water spoof flicks A Haunted House and Fifty Shades Of Black, to just bad ideas like Sextuplets) can be charitably described as ‘skippable’. But here, Tiddes and DP Terry Stacey make all this material look like it should be in cinemas. The aesthetics pulls and even straight-up scene rips from the spoof targets all look good, and even when the film wanders off into other genres, they still manage to sell it as something that is both funny and genuinely entertaining on its own merits. When it’s meant to be funny, scary, exciting, or just plain goofy, it is.
But more than anything, it’s just nice to see the gang back together. Anna Faris as Cindy still sells naïve ditziness like a champion, Regina Hall as Brenda remains the most consistently watchable character this franchise has ever seen, Marlon Wayans hasn’t been this much fun on-screen in decades, and Shawn Wayans… well, Ray is still up to his fifth-base shenanigans (one of the earlier signs of the sub-genre’s rot), but it’s quite impressive how much his introductory scene recontextualises even his worst moments in previous films. There’s no feeling of obligation or raw monetary incentive in their performances, which make it easier to be happy that they’re all here again because they genuinely seem to be happy about being back. Even the better “rebooquels” out there can slip up on that point.
Scary Movie gives a long-awaited and much-appreciated refresh not just for its franchise, but for the entire sub-genre. After so many years of flash-in-the-pan references and just generally disdainful attitudes towards filmmakers and audiences alike, and then just as many years of dead silence over sour earth, seeing a new spoof movie that both knows what it’s talking about and has entertainment value beyond the length of a trailer, is bloody amazing. It recaptures the manic energy of the first two films without letting the wrinkles show, and it also makes for a great rebuttal to the ‘offend first, chuckle later maybe’ approach of modern edgelord comedy in its approach to actually making fun of everyone and everything. It’s dumb fun done smartly.
