As the scene begins, we see a young woman making popcorn late at night, preparing to watch a video. Suddenly the phone rings, and a frightful voice on the other end of the line asks her what her favorite horror movie is. The voice belongs to a ghost-faced psychotic who stalks and kills the young woman, thus beginning a horrible spree of murders.
Sound familiar? Well, how about a plot line involving six teenagers who accidentally kill a pedestrian and then conspire to cover up the crime? While both of these scenes were played very seriously in the recent teen slasher films Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, in the new film from the Wayans brothers, Scary Movie, they are given a comedic spin.
Marlon and Shawn Wayans, who wrote the screenplay for this film, starred until very recently in a sitcom on the WB that was usually hard-pressed for laughs. But with this film, they prove their talent under the direction of their older brother, Keenan Ivory Wayans, creator and star of the former Fox sketch comedy In Living Color.
Both the script and the direction meld into a very funny parody of the recent string of slasher pics starring a female protagonist and a hip young cast of murder suspects (and victims). Character types and hackneyed plots are not the only thing to be borrowed from the genre, however. Scary Movie occasionally lifts bits of dialogue or even entire scenes directly from films like Scream and The Blair Witch Project, and it is always peppered with just enough sarcasm to have the audience rolling in the aisles. These spot-on spoofs, which even stray from the horror genre to include recent hits like The Matrix and The Usual Suspects, prove that the creators of the film had a very detailed knowledge of the films on which its parody is based.
This attention to detail can also be a downfall, if many of the audience members simply do not have the background in film and pop culture that is required to get jokes about Carmen Electra's dating habits or to recognize guest appearances from Laverne and Shirley cast members. Luckily the filmmakers realized this could be a problem, and they filled the film with more crude humor in an attempt to appeal to a broader range of people.
Some of these jokes, like the numerous references to passing gas, are mildly amusing and mostly harmless. But other raunchy sexual allusions might turn off some audience members. Jokes like occasional homosexual stereotypes could offend some viewers, but most will just let any such jokes of bad taste roll off their backs with a shake of the head and a slight chuckle. This is after all just a light-hearted comedy, and there was clearly no offense intended.
Part There's Something about Mary and part Young Frankenstein, the Wayans brothers continue a long tradition of parodies in the vein of the Zucker brothers or Mel Brooks. While this film could easily have turned out to be just another bad horror movie, the script managed to walk the line between brilliant satire and lowbrow humor quite well. Scary Movie is easily the funniest movie to be released this summer, and it will definitely leave you laughing long after the movie has ended.
