Scary Movie

Keenen Ivory Wayans makes Scary Movie with an uncomplicated aim: to turn familiar horror into rude physical comedy. It is funny enough to reward an appetite for that, though the weaker jokes make the 88 minutes feel less brisk than they should. The film is happiest when somebody has worked out a piece of slapstick and given a performer space to sell it. The references alone earn rather less of our goodwill.

Anna Faris gives Cindy the commitment this material needs, resisting the temptation to stand outside the joke and congratulate us for recognising it. We need somebody to take the nonsense seriously, and she makes that seem a reasonable use of her time. Regina Hall’s Brenda and Dave Sheridan help keep the performances lively when the writing grows thin. There is pleasure in watching actors work this hard at being ridiculous, even when the joke they have been handed scarcely merits the effort.

The pastiches are more attentive than the film’s general scruffiness suggests. Francis Kenny’s cinematography and Robb Wilson King’s production design help make the imitations of The Matrix and The Blair Witch Project recognisable before the comedy starts pulling them apart. We laughed at the send-up of The Matrix, because the care taken over the imitation makes the foolishness funnier. That care is welcome in a comedy elsewhere content with a much rougher standard.

Mark Helfrich’s editing has an uneven comic rhythm: we want less time with the weak jokes and more confidence in the good ones. Some slapstick lands cleanly, while the stretches between can feel oddly underpowered for such a busy comedy. Keenen Ivory Wayans gets plenty of energy from the ensemble, but is less reliable at deciding when a gag has exhausted its welcome. David Kitay supplies serviceable music, though the performers’ timing contributes more to the successful jokes than the score does.

The screenplay, credited to Shawn Wayans, Aaron Seltzer, Marlon Wayans, Jason Friedberg, Buddy Johnson and Phil Beauman, is too willing to mistake vulgarity for a finished joke. Gross-out humour is not a fault in itself; there is nothing especially admirable about making a polite spoof. The trouble comes when vulgarity does all the work and there is no comic surprise beyond how far the film is prepared to go. Those passages feel lazy beside the more carefully arranged physical jokes.

There is also a basic difficulty with sending up horror that already knows its own habits. A spoof needs to find something those films have missed, or at least make the familiar absurdity funnier. Scary Movie manages that often enough in its physical comedy, but its borrowed references can feel like prompts waiting for a better gag. The acting carries it through some thin stretches.

For an evening of crude comedy, there is enough here to justify the occasional groan, particularly from Anna Faris and the more exact parodies. We would not recommend it as a sharp examination of horror, and the gross-out material is a substantial part of the bargain. Its 18 certificate ought to discourage anyone expecting something mild. Come for the cast, with a generous tolerance for jokes that should have stayed unwritten.