Scary Movie 2

Despite what all those other critics told you, and despite its utter moral depravity, last summer's "Scary Movie" was a truly uproarious film for those who enjoy truly cruel comedies. It was one of the few films released recently that lived up to its tagline: "No shame. No mercy. No sequel."

Well, until recently. Apparently under the impression that two out of three ain't bad, Miramax released "Scary Movie 2" this July 4th, under the promising tagline "More shameless. More merciless." However, "Scary Movie 2" shows its lack of shame and mercy in the way it treats the audience, rather than the horror films it attempts to parody. We had a right to expect another round of sublime tastelessness here. "Scary Movie 2" just feels incoherent, forced and pointless.

Every sequel problem you can think of raises its ugly head in "Scary Movie 2," beginning and ending with the actual parodic content. "Scary Movie" took as its subject the Kevin Williamson-scripted "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer" series, which were widely seen, widely praised (at least in the case of "Scream") and, for better or worse, widely enjoyed. The winking adherence to formula and pretentious psycho-babble of these films sorely needed to be eviscerated by some intrepid humorists, and writers Shawn and Marlon Wayans and director Keenan Ivory Wayans did the job well.

"Scary Movie 2," by contrast, attempts to smack down the two films of last year which were based on Shirley Jackson's novel "The Haunting of Hill House." The first problem is that no sane person saw either of these films, much less both, and some familiarity with these films is necessary to find anything at all funny in much of the script. But the larger problem is that both of these films were pretty funny already, although not intentionally so, and veered perilously close to parodying themselves. Thus, the Wayanses have precious little to add, and this lack of material manifests itself in a flat, incoherent script full of overextended side parodies of films like "The Exorcist" and "Charlie's Angels." It's not that the Wayanses seem reluctant to throw punches, but they have nothing much to beat on.

Thus, "Scary Movie 2" depends entirely on its shock value for humor. This is rarely a winning proposition, as Tom Green recently proved, and "Scary Movie 2" does nothing to buck that trend. Particularly galling is that the most spectacular offenses to taste are both shoehorned into the script and recycled from "Scary Movie." I think I'm only prepared to laugh at a penis used as a murder weapon once in two years, thank you. Similarly, the characters in "Scary Movie 2" are just as obsessed with their deviant sexuality as the characters in "Scary Movie," but jokes about deviant sexuality get pretty tiresome when there's nothing else around them.

Finally, the distinctive quality of "Scary Movie" was that it really, really hated all of its characters and the schematic, borrowed plot they were working in, and it never passed up an opportunity to do something cruel but helplessly amusing to either. "Scary Movie 2" seems downright compassionate by comparison - most of the characters don't die, or have their sexual obsessions mocked, or even have insulting names. And compassion is exactly the last thing you want from this kind of film.

So what we have is a satire with nothing much to make fun of, a string of listless gross-out jokes and a heart of gold. That ain't good. If Miramax has any mercy and shame, it'll take its earlier promise not to make a sequel seriously this time, because the prospect of seeing this franchise slide further into comedic decrepitude is scary indeed.

This was originally only sent to those members of the Spam-O-Matic who had corresponded with me while I lived in New York for a month in the summer of 2001. It was a lonely time for me even as it was an exhilirating time, and I felt like rewarding them with extra-special bonus content. I'm putting it up now in part because anything that happened in New York during the summer of 2001 feels like ancient history to us all and partly because this site is a complete rejection of the idea of the Spam-O-Matic as method for differentiating true friends from people who just like to read my writing. Now everyone just likes to read my writing, and I seek out my friends elsewhere.

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