Scary Movie 2 (2001)
Running time: 83 minutes (1 hour, 23 minutes)
MPAA – R for strong sexual and gross humor, graphic language and some drug content
DIRECTOR: Keenan Ivory Wayans
WRITERS: Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Alyson Fouse, Greg Grabianski, Dave Polsky, Michael Anthony Snowden, and Craig Wayans (based upon characters created by Shawn and Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer)
PRODUCER: Eric L. Gold
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Steven Bernstein (D.o.P.)
EDITORS: Tom Nordberg, Richard Pearson, and Peter Teschner
COMPOSERS: Mark McGrath
COMEDY/HORROR
Starring: Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, James DeBello, Shawn Wayans, David Cross, Regina Hall, Christopher Masterson, Tim Curry, Kathleen Robertson, Chris Elliot, James Woods, Andy Richter, Tori Spelling, and Natasha Lyonne
The subject of this movie review is Scary Movie 2, a 2001 comedy and parody film. Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, this movie is a sequel to the 2001 hit film, Scary Movie, and is a spoof of horror-thriller films.
The four survivors from the first Scary Movie: heroine Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), gay jock Ray Wilkins (Shawn Wayans), pot head Shorty Meeks (Marlon Wayans), and his sister Brenda (Regina Hall) endanger themselves again when a college instructor, Professor Oldman (Tim Curry), and his wheelchair bound assistant, Dwight Hartman (David Cross), recruit them to spend the weekend in an old mansion called Hell House for a research project on insomnia. Cindy’s new admirer Buddy (Christopher Kennedy Masterson), Theo (Tori Spelling), and hottie Jamie Lee Curtisto (Kathleen Robertson) join them for the hijinks.
If a really bad movie can be really hilarious, this one is. How bad is it, one might ask? Well, that wouldn’t be a rhetorical question. The filmmakers nearly discard story and plot and replace them with dumb sight gags and gross humor, primarily of the bodily functions and bodily fluids type.
Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans, Scary Movie 2 is at times quite funny, even hilarious; at other times, it is embarrassing in it over reliance on bodily fluids and sex jokes. After seeing a masturbation scene, simulated oral sex, an appearance by Lester “Beetlejuice” Green, one can only wonder if the filmmakers used a single 13-year-old American boy’s brain to create this film and passed it around during production.
Director Wayans specializes in taking scenes from other movies and parodying them with visual puns and gags, and he continues that here. He has become over time more skilled at stringing together longer strands of gags in lieu of story in his movies. He isn’t a strong storyteller. When the jokes run out, his movies rapidly run out of energy, as was the case in the I'm Gonna Git You Sucka.
Utilizing as many joke and gag writers as Walt Disney does for its animated films, Wayans turns his movie into a dirty joke book, and certainly doesn’t get the smart and sassy results Disney gets in one of its films. The plot, about a weekend experiment in proving life after death or some such lie, is merely a weak idea upon which to hang this film’s nasty proceedings. The story, if written, would only be a few lines in length, and the plot is merely a path by which Wayans and his accomplices laid out the yucks and giggles.
Small roles by James Woods and Chris Elliot are painfully embarrassing to watch, so filled with vileness and sickness as they are. Still, this movie has moments that are truly uproariously funny, and this makes the movie slyly attractive. The filmmakers certainly succeeded in making a funny movie, but they chase off many viewers with their determination to be hardcore funky. Most of the cast is actually up to the task of making the movie be what it’s supposed to be. Do we dare call that good acting?
What else is there to say? Scary Movie 2 is really bad and really funny. But beware; it is a humor that turns off many viewers.
5 of 10
B-
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