Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Just so...so bad

An action-packed slog

A Masterpiece!

Taking popular films from the 90s and replicating specific scenes and plots to create a spoof film sounds incredibly lazy. Surprisingly the originality comes from transforming these horror films into comedic sketches that will certainly make the originals less scary. A group of high schoolers have their past come to haunt them as a masked serial killer slashes his way through each one. Borrowing the plot of 'Scream' and entangling it with threads from 'The Usual Suspects' and 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'. Wayans attempted to include as many film references as possible, and half the fun is identifying them. "Ohhh there's 'The Matrix' 360 freeze frame!", "the classic "I see dead people" line, niceee!" and "Amistad II instead of 'Titanic'? Sure, I'm onboard". Certain imitations were hilarious such as 'The Blair Witch Project' woodland run and the cinema viewing of 'Shakespeare in Love'. It's certainly a good time when with friends, but is it actually a decent film? Well, yes and no. The horrendous overacting is humorous at first but quickly becomes tiresome as Cindy consistently screams in fear and runs away like a headless chicken. For me, a large portion of the slapstick humour and "witty" dialogue were misses. These spoof films rely on you watching the films that it is attempting to mimic, so if you haven't watched any you will not find this funny at all. At the time of this review I haven't seen 'Miss Congeniality' so the entire beauty pageant scene was wasted on me. The script relied heavily on visual comedy which mostly comprised of grotesque uninspired actions such as farting inconveniently. May have been funny in the 70s but not anymore, come on. What this flick does do is introduce us to the character Brenda who, whilst criminally underused in this, is a massive highlight in future sequels. This is, for me, my least favourite of the original trilogy. A solid watch if you are drunk with friends, but unfortunately comes across as unintelligent and unfunny for most of its runtime.

RELEASED IN 2000 and directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, "Scary Movie" spoofs 90's horror films, like "Scream" (1996), "I Know What You Did Last Summer" (1997) and "The Blair Witch Project" (1999). Anna Faris plays the likable protagonist; other cast members include: Jon Abrahams, Shannon Elizabeth, Dave Sheridan, Shawn Wayans, Regina Hall and Marlon Wayans. Carmen Electra appears in the prologue.It's interesting seeing Faris when she was so young and there are several laughs throughout, especially if you're up on 90's horror. Unfortunately, the movie's ruined by constant crude, sleazy jokes with way too much gay-oriented non-humor. THE FILM RUNS 88 minutes and was shot at Pasadena City College, California, but mostly in British Columbia (Vancouver, Victoria & Richmond). WRITERS: Too many to name. GRADE: D

Halfway through this film I was praying for something subtle and witty to happen. Praying that we wouldn't get another joke which was easy to spot a mile off. Hoping beyond hope that I would find something to actually laugh at. Unfortunately, there isn't a single funny moment in SCARY MOVIE. There are a couple of mildly amusing parodies and in-jokes but otherwise, this film sits in the barren wasteland of humour. That ultimate failure: a comedy that just isn't funny.It's obvious which audience the makers of this film were aiming at: the teen market. Thus, we have a movie whose jokes fall into two categories: the parody, and the crude. By crude I mean jokes which are extremely obvious in nature and lack both wit and sophistication - somebody getting hit by a car is an example of this (so hilariously funny that they do the same joke twice). In the right context these jokes can sometimes work (take THE NAKED GUN trilogy for example), but here they fall flat. And, to make matters worse, many of the jokes are of the explicit sexual nature which have been depressingly filling the movies as of late. Do they make me laugh? No, they just make me sigh.The parodies should have worked, by all accounts. A fight between the heroine and the killer is done in slow-mo, to remind us of THE MATRIX. Yet even infallible jokes such as these somehow fall flat - perhaps because they were all used up in the film's trailer, so that we simply spend our time waiting for them to show up. They fly by thick and fast, references to THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE SIXTH SENSE, and many more, but they consistently fail to provoke laughs. The film's ending is ripped off from THE USUAL SUSPECTS, but incredibly this is played seriously - a cop out for sure. A cameo from DAWSON'S CREEK star James Van Der Beek is unexpected and successful, so perhaps more cameos would have helped.The one funny scene in this film has Cindy (Anna Faris) stalked by a mask-wearing murderer up a flight of stairs. She grabs anything at hand to throw at him, and the items become more and more ludicrous - beginning with a vase, moving on to a bicycle, an old woman, and finally a piano. Yet for one genuinely amusing moment, there are a hundred more painfully bad ones. For fans with bad taste only, this is guaranteed to offend everyone else - as witnessed after I watched other audience members walk out of the cinema I was in as this was playing.

Scary Movie is a parody of the teenage slasher genre, and luckily a very funny parody indeed. Keenan Ivory Wayans is the mastermind, and he has assembled a fairly standard group of teenagers and a psychopath, and gives them the opportunity to completely spoof the slasher genre. The "plot," such as it is, happens as a result of the teenagers out cruising with much hard alcohol accidentally hit someone, mistake him for dead, and then accidentally kill him when they throw his body into the bay to dispose of it. We suspect that somehow the victim rose from the dead or recovered to be the psychopath, but we are never quite sure. The psychopath, with a bunch of hilarious changeable masks out of the Scream movies, attempts to kill all the teens, but has some misadventures along the way.This movie is completely shameless, and anyone with a sense of decency should be warned. If you do not mind this issue, however, the movie has some great laughs. One scene that sticks out in my mind pretty much encapsulates this movie's strategy: at one point, the killer opens the door on a bunch of teenage boys who are watching TV and smoking ridiculous amounts of pot. They are completely helpless and about to get slaughtered when one of them has the presence of mind to offer the killer a smoke. After a few puffs, everyone starts laughing hysterically together, and then they all decide to start making threatening phone calls to potential victims (giggling all the time). The scene has an ironic ending that I will not give away for fear of tripping the spoiler alert. The killer has lots of moments where things don't go right and you think, man, it is tough to be psychopath. The teenagers are a study in human superficiality and often seem to preoccupied with their own issues to notice that they are slowly being sliced and diced. The sight gags are quite good and their are some legit surprises that keep you guessing. All in all, it is an hour and a half of quite effective tasteless entertainment.