Rated R - Running Time: 1:35 - Released 7/4/01
SCARY MOVIE 2
Rated R - Running Time: 1:35 - Released 7/4/01
Although the tagline for Keenen Ivory Wayans's 2000 horror spoof
Scary Movie was "No
mercy - No shame - No sequel," that film's considerable profits
(which more than doubled its expeditures in its opening weekend
last July and continued in force through November) have necessitated
the inevitable result: Scary Movie 2, whose tagline is
"We lied." Containing much of the same type of foolishness
present in its predecessor, SM2 re-convenes some the previous
film's creative team (the Wayans brothers plus some other writers)
and some of its cast (the characters who lived through the first
film), again providing spoof scenes of the most memorable horror/thriller
films that have occurred in the past year, like What
Lies Beneath, Hannibal,
Charlie's Angels, and
even The Exorcist, following
that 1973 film's 2000 re-release. Perhaps because it concentrates
more on actual horror spoof and less on bodily fluids, this film
edges out SM1, if only slightly, in comedic impact and
successful parody. That's not to say it's a particularly good
film, of course; the humor still doesn't provoke more than a few
guilty chuckles, but I have no doubt that it will keep Wayans
and company in the black (no pun intended) for the foreseeable
future.
Taking its setting from 1999's The
Haunting, SM2 places sweet young thing Cindy Campbell
(Anna Faris), her lustful boyfriend Buddy (Malcolm In The Middle's
Christopher Masterson), and friends Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Ray
(Shawn Wayans), and Alex (Tori Spelling), among others, in a haunted
house under the pretense of a psychological sleep study instigated
by their college professor (Tim Curry), who really just wants
to make it with some of his female students. The house's sole
living resident is its caretaker, Hanson (Chris Elliott), whose
terribly disfigured hand causes horror all around, especially
when he uses it to prepare food. While staying at the creepy mansion,
Cindy discovers that she bears a remarkable resemblance to the
house's former matron, who killed her husband and his mistress
in a jealous rage.
It soon becomes clear that the husband's ghost still inhabits
the place, and upon seeing Cindy, decides to take revenge. (Spelling's
character, Alex, who resembles the ghost's sexy mistress, gets
a different treatment.) Meanwhile, the house is also apparently
haunted by a girl who at one time spun her head around, spoke
with the voice of the devil, and spat pea soup, as evidenced by
a long Exorcist spoof (starring James Woods as the lustful
title character and Natasha Lyonne as the possessed girl) at the
film's start.
The best thing one can say about this movie is that it provides reasonably serviceable entertainment for its 18-to-25-year-old market audience. Basically just a bunch of silly spoof scenes cobbled together around a thin premise, it allows the Wayans brothers to have fun in the way a group of kids might have fun with a video camcorder, except with a multi-million-dollar budget. It doesn't represent great vision on the part of its writers or its director, nor does it contain the kind of biting satire one finds in more intelligent comedies. It simply represents a rather sophomoric but lighthearted view of the latest horror movies, and a mercenary viewpoint on how to make money from them. ***½