Scary Movie

Updated June 26, 2020 | Infoplease Staff

Keenan Ivory Wayans' Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood was the perfect satire: it targeted ghetto melodrama flicks parading in the clothes of the hip-hop realism. The resulting movie was consistently funny as it multiplied stereotypes into silliness. Naturally the Scream series is much harder to hit with parody, since writer Kevin Williamson built pop-cultural references and goofy irony into his script with enormous success.

Of course, nothing is off-limits for the Wayans' humor (who says you can't spoof a satire?), and in addition to the genre-implosion, there is a lot of violence and crude jokes. Carmen Electra, scantily clad, is chased in slo-mo by a psychotic killer equipped, Scream-style, with a mask and a hood. Only this killer is friends with the local pothead (co-writer Marlon Wayans). Jaunty newcomer Anna Faris steps into Neve Campbell's shoes, always staying just out of reach of the murderer's grasp.

Scary Movie's parody squared is best when it sticks to the basics. One of the funnier moments occurs when it departs from the nubile slasher genre and sticks in a trailer for Amistad II. The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, and Shakespeare in Love are all in here as well, successfully fleeced with the Wayans' comic barbs.