Scary Movie     Some of you might remember that stuff that delis used to sell called 'sub meat'. It was basically made up of the odds and ends of every little bit of luncheon meat under the sun. And it wasn't the choicest cuts of meat that made their way into the scrapple. Well... welcome to the Sub Meat of movies.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, dig?

    Gore: 8
    Schmaltz: 0
    Character Development: -33
    Sturgeon Principle: Somewhere in the bottom of the 50th percentile.

    I actually found the trailers before this film more enjoyable than the film itself. I did find it very encouraging to live in a world where finally an entire trailer reel could be taken up with nothing but fantasy and horror film. And now I'm bouncing in my seat over Blair Witch 2, though Highlander: Endgame looks like a disco remix of the last few films. What's the deal with Urban Legend: Final Cut? We didn't need a first film, much less another one where the students are (get this), making a film about urban legends. Wasn't this a Scream trope? Oh well, no one said I had to live in a world where all films were good...
    Oh, right, I should probably talk about the meat of the movie, shouldn't I? I laughed a good, solid, ten minutes in Scary Movie. Sadly, that was scattered over the movie's entire ten-billion-trillion-kazillion minute run. This is very bad news for a movie like Scary Movie because ultimately, the film has no cohesion other than being a loose collection of jokes about some films that we may or may not have seen over the past few years. Oh they're all there... I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix, Scream , The Sixth Sense... but ultimately you could have gotten a much better film if you'd just taped every five-minute parody of these films that came down the pipe and spliced them into one long mess'o'film.
    This is not to say that films which are Total Conversion parodies don't work. Take for example my favorite TC parody film of all time, Hot Shots: Part Deux. This flick is very little more than a parody of war films and their Rambo subset; but ultimately it manages to achieve true beauty because it mixes some incredibly clever dialogue in with some actual (if comedic) character development and never lets up with the witty gags. And here's the key: the gags can stand on their own, outside of the framework of the movie. Oh sure, you may not get the chicken-shooting scene if you've never seen the trailers for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, but you could easily understand six other japes that were going on in the same minute that one was being delivered. It was a packed film, and managed to offer some content of its own.
    Compare and contrast to Scary Movie. (Notice how much I seem to be talking about other movies than this one? It's telling, honestly it is...). I'm not even sure where to begin on this film's flaws. Let's begin with the gags... which unlike the aforementioned Hot Shots: PD, utterly flop the standing on one's own test. Every minute of this film can be divided up into a close parody of some other movie's scene, or a penis joke. That's about it. Parody and Penis. Sounds like a late night Comedy Central show, doesn't it? The parodies are mildly amusing, but lack the depth that they should have had. Only once in the whole film does Scary Movie bother to examine the shortcomings of the films that it parodies. The rest of the time it prefers to imitate them, and honestly it resembles a sixth-grade class putting on a Rockette show: you can't help but be reminded that the real thing is so bloody much better.
    The characters fail to be developed; in fact, I'm not sure I can tell them apart from one another. They suffer from being constantly re-tweaked to fit into the Gag Du Jour. There's no plot to speak of; the entire film is strung together on jokes that make no sense clustered together. For instance, since I'm sure you've seen this (and every other freakin' worthwhile joke in the whole feeeeelm) spoilered by the commercials, I'll bring up the Matrix gag. In it, the heroine and the Bad Dude get into a Reality-Bending fight wherein Neo's battle is recreated. Fine. Good. *pause* Why? There's no plot reason for it. Hell, even a comedy needs to have some degree of cohesion. I could even invent a reason for you, for the love of liver snaps. Do a Buffy the Vampire Slayer parody... remember when she gathered the faith of her friends to defeat this season's Big Bad Dude? Do a Sailor Moon parody... remember how they all came back from the dead to support Serena/Usagi at the end of season one? Oh wait... no, that wouldn't have worked. Because, you see, Scary Movie isn't aimed at that demographic at all. It's not aimed at the people who would willingly watch Scream and enjoy it. Honestly, this film is aimed directly at the pork-rind-filled heart of the people who own fifty-seven copies of Porky's in case one of them wears out.

    I give it One phallic joke.

    On the plus side, I did get some really good popcorn out of this, and it was free to boot. Let's focus on this in an effort to end this review well.
    Let's get the ratings out of the way first, shall we?

    Butter: 7
    Salt: 3
    BBQ Powder: 10+ (I gots ta have my BBQ Powder)
    Orville Redenbacher Principle: 8

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