Review of Scary Movie (1991) by José C — 05 Aug 2015

With all the various teen horrors's of the 90's and early 2000's, what else is better than to completely lampoon them in ridiculous style. Coming from a comedy styling much like that of films such as "Airplane" and "Naked Gun" but much more crude, comes Scary Movie, with it's jokes that are completely insane and plot that well, doesn't really make sense a lot of the time. I thought before I watched this that it looked like a movie I simply wouldn't like, but it surprised me, it is far far from perfect but still, a funny movie.

It's all based around the fact the our main characters killed a man a year before and someone is out to get them all, but who?. Of course the story is just a rip off of "Scream" but that is the whole point, in fact at various times throughout it is alluded to. The narrative plays out like a child had tried to write a film but then some guys called the Wayans brothers came in and added some rude joke to the pot, oh and on that point about pot, well watch it and you'll see what I mean.

The cast has people such as Anna Faris, Jon Abrahams, Shannon Elizabeth and of course Marlon Wayans and Shawn Wayans who all could of destroyed their careers here. I did though enjoy the cast, they mix the right amount of humour into the bad acting that when by the end, you don't know if they couldn't act or not. One of my favourite characters from this is Shorty played by Marlon Wayans who's stoner comedy is hilarious and makes some scenes truly laugh out loud. And on the point of laugh out loud moments, the scream masked murderer is hilarious, watch out for when their mask changes facial expressions, just very funny.

That all said about the jokes, the film can be near hit and miss. It is true probably that this is way too crude and stupid to be OK but I felt it is, it's enjoyable, doesn't overstay it's welcome and as mentioned before, can have laugh out loud moments too. Sure the Wayans don't always make the best decisions in film and when your film has Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer co writing it, you may expect your movie's reputation to drop really low. A thing I think the Wayans do well here though is mix the crude with genuine jokes, not only is it a good parody of slasher movies, but can turn serious moments into hilarious ones in a second.

Now who might like this movie, well of course this is right up some people's street when it comes to comedy, it's the kind of movie where you might expect a critic to recommend this to teens. The truth is though that teens or well maybe people who were teens when all these horror movies were around, will really enjoy it and probably laugh(well at least I hope as if you don't laugh at this there isn't much else to enjoy). Don't just watch this like you expect it to be bad, give it a go and like me you might be surprised how funny you found it.

Overall a movie I personally found kind of OK, maybe wrestled with my thoughts a little as to whether it was pretty so-so but I think all in all it is funny enough to be mostly positive stuff. Wouldn't really say people who consider themselves "connoisseurs" of fine comedy would enjoy this but to the hell with most comedy, this is stupid enough to be fun to watch.