Scary Movie
starring John Abrahams, Rick Ducommun, Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth, Anna Faris, Kurt Fuller, Regina hall, Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans
written by Shawn and Marlon Waylans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman Jaason Feidberg and Asron Seltzer
directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans
I loved this movie. So did a lot of other people, so had to wait more than a month to be able to rent it from my local video rental shop. Other customers were renting the shop’s two copies for weeks and weeks in a row. (I hate when people do that. I almost always keep a video for only a few hours. A movie is two hours long, and to keep a video longer than that - especially when there is a whole city of others folks out there waiting to see it - is unforgivably selfish. But ... )
The movie is a spk of other horro movies, and if you have seen Scream, The Blair Witch Project, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and even the science-action movie Matrix then you will recognize the jokes in Scary Movie. (This is a culture clash problem I have noticed sometimes when I see an American movie in a movie theater in Tokyo. The Japanese audience, even supposing their English comprehension is good virtually miss all the culture-dependent jokes and other movie references, songs, personalities, etc that only an American or Canadian would know.)
In particular the movie features immature adolescent sexual humor, so if you do not lie that kind of thing, then beware. (My wife hated it, and I was disappointed because I thought that she would like this movie, a comedy horror. My wife does not usually enjoy the kinds of movies that I rent, and I am always on the lookout for something that we can enjoy together.)
The whole movie is ridiculous, which is the point of it. The opening scene, for example, spoofs all dead-teenager horror movies, and the opening scene of Scream in particular. A teenaged girl alone at home is a classic target for horror. The killer is in the house. In the first chase scene the girl passes by a table on which there lies a gun, a grenade and a banana. So, what does she pick up to defend herself with? The banana, of course. (This reminds me of my frequent question to my daughter who practices karate: how would she defend herself if I attacked her with abanana, followed by banana-stabbling motions?)
The girl is chased out of ht house in her underwear. Just outside the door is a big sing that says Certain Death with an arrow pointing in one direction, and Safety with an arrow pointing in the opposite direction. Of course she runs towards certain death. What fun would it be if she reached safety too soon? No fun at all.
The Neve Campbell movie, Scream, teaches us the three rules of horror movies:
1) Don’t leave the room and say “I’ll be right back,” because you wont’ You’ll be dead.
2) Don’t have sex, because only virgins survive the massacre.
3) Don’t drink. This is an extension of the Don’t have sex rule. Horror movie murder victims are usually those teenagers engaged in some immorality: sexual activity, drugs and alcohol.
Scary Movie gives us with three parallel rules:
1) You gotta be quick.
2) Don’t fall down.
3) Don’t look back.
They seem like meaningless rules until you see them in the context of the film’s last scene - kids robbing a convenience store.
In the movie Scream 2 the murderer anticipates using a violent TV defense at his trial. He was driven to murderous violence by being exposed to violence on television. Therefore he is not so much a criminal perpetrator as a victim of society. Scary Movie offers its own, unique interpretation of the motives behind murderous violence. Watching TV shows does not create psycho killers. Canceling TV shows does. I agree. Similarly, it is not exposure to graphic sex that causes deviance so much as it is lack of sex that does.