Scary Movie

Before any of you read this review, I'd like to say: I'm sorry, Mom.

We are going to have a little elimination round for people wondering if they want to watch "Scary Movie" or not.

Did you feel "There's Something About Mary" was excessively gross? If so, don't see this film.

Do you have a problem with seeing very intimate portions of the male anatomy fairly regularly on the movie screen? If you do, go watch "Chicken Run" instead.

Finally, do you think the idea of a sex-starved boyfriend, faced with an impassible forest of pubic hair standing between him and his long-sought objective, using a Weedwhacker (with saftey goggles!) to hack a path through the vegetation is funny? If so, step into the theatre. I have a movie right here for you.

It is important to note the complete disjunction between what this film looks like it is going to be on TV and what it actually ends up being. "Scary Movie"'s nominal purpose, as expressed in its advertising, is to parody the endless parade of Kevin Williamson-scripted meta-horror movie crap that we have had to endure over the past few years. This is a noble objective, and "Scary Movie" does achieve it to some degree.

Herein lies the problem: At the same time as it niftily puts the screws to "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer," "Scary Movie" proffers completely gratuitous, blisteringly obscene jokes with such regularity as to embarrass even a seasoned connoisseur of lowlife humor. The above quiz studiously avoided mentioning four centerpiece scenes which frankly are unfit for even a non-family newspaper like the Diamondback. The protagonists are relentlessly egotistical and unlikable, the killings are needless and enabled by the protagonists' self-absorption, and the theme of repressed homosexuality comes up so often during the course of this movie's hijinks that they could well have named the flick "Scary Repressed Homosexuality Movie." Although this film was written by Marlon and Shawn Wayans and directed by their brother Keenen Ivory, this is not an "African-American" comedy, but a black comedy in the true sense, one which plays the foibles of both movie characters and real life into catastrophic situations for kicks.

Still, this movie will deliver the laughter for those who enjoy humor that completely lacks a moral or aesthetic compass. How come? It's the old "Airplane" formula: make enough jokes so that even if most of them aren't amusing, there are plenty of leftover jokes that actually work, and make the film worth watching. This is the most relentless comedy in recent memory, constantly upping its antes, pouring on where most films would be pulling back, getting in that one last stab or that one last cutting remark or that one last attempt at illegal sex with minors. The Wayanses bring in utterly random movie references, people with weird voices, constant drug humor, endless physical pratfalls--everything in the stupid-humor arsenal, one after the other after the other, and pack it all into 85 minutes. (After Kevin Williamson's ironic postmodernity, the humorous references to the filmic nature of "Scary Movie" are a welcome tonic: "Hey, this is a movie." "No, it's not, it's real life." "No, this is a movie. See, there's the sound guy, the script coordinator...") Eventually, you feel beaten senseless into laughing; you simply cannot help yourself. That is, if you're not grossed out of existence.

It helps that the Wayanses have cast a bunch of actors who are mostly so little-known that they have no careers to wreck by, for example, playing a retarded man who uses his family's vacuum cleaner to deviant sexual ends. Special mention among the unknowns must be made of Anna Faris, who is probably a better Neve Campbell than Neve Campbell is, and certainly brings more of a sense of humor to the whole undertaking. Yet the more famous actors also bring a welcome sense of gusto to the film. Particularly noteworthy is former "American Pie" girl Shannon Elizabeth as a beauty queen crowned while wearing a sash reading "Miss Fellatio," who eventually dies a truly hilarious death as she carries her self-centered sarcasm one step too far in an encounter with the serial killer.

This whole movie, in fact, carries whatever it is doing at the time one step too far. (This refers especially to Keenen's setups of time-delayed jokes, which telegraph their punchlines reliably and disappointingly, marring an otherwise spirited directorial effort.) For some viewers, nothing can or will excuse some of the content of this film, which is so sick as to be indescribable even with several layers of protective euphemism. But some viewers will relish the experience both as a way to prove their endurance and to indulge their amoral glee without, you know, acting it out. Whichever type of viewer you are, you will be exhausted when you exit the theater if you see "Scary Movie." Whether your exhaustion will be from revulsion or laughter, or both, is for you to decide.

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