Overall Rating
 Awesome: 26%
Worth A Look: 17.5%
Average: 12.5%
Pretty Bad: 13%
Total Crap: 31%
9 reviews, 146 user ratings
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| Scary Movie 2 |
by Scott Weinberg
"A textbook example of Commerce masquerading as Art."
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Penis gags, fart jokes, jaw-dropping vulgarity, a tone of smarmy contempt for the audience and an overall sense of playfully juvenile stupidity. You know the drill on this sort of sequel: "If you liked the first one..."While the original Scary Movie was certainly no work of art, there was a certain disturbing charm about the casual way it displayed its filth. No taboo was off-limits and audiences were obviously thrilled with the barrage of potty humor, since the original grossed well over $100 million bucks to the shock of the entire known universe. To say that Scary Movie 2 was a "rush job" is like saying Paula Poundstone is "somewhat creepy".
So flash forward to one calendar year later, and here's the inevitable sequel. Is it any good? Here's a real simple way to figure it out:
A. If you loved the original, you'll like this one. You'll most likely be stoned on cheap nick weed and have a ball. 4 stars.
B. If you kinda sorta liked the original, you'll have a wretched time for 87 minutes and slap the person next to you for being an infantile dork who thinks that anything fart-related is automatically worthy of unparalleled peals of insane laughter. 1 star.
C. If you hated the original, well then you're kinda foolish for lining up at the trough again, now aren't you? Negative 2 stars for you for not demanding to see Crazy/Beautiful like you agreed to in the first place!
Waaaay back when the original Scary Movie was being made (11 months ago), there was a brief controversy regarding a similar project also in production. The Wayanseses solved this problem by simply "absorbing" the best gags from that movie and it seems like this sequel is just a collection of jokes deemed too moronic for inclusion in the first pic! Between these three movies, I believe 132 different screenwriters put their kids through college. (For the record: That "other" movie? It debuted on the USA Network under the title Scream if You Know What I did Last Halloween, and that flick makes Scary Movie look like Citizen Kane.)
So while Scary Movie was content to offer a handful of slasher-related silliness, the sequel has some decidedly narrower aspirations. This time we're spoofing The Haunting. Now call me wacky, but wasn't that godawful wretched stinkpot remake a few years back enough of a spoof? To satire stupidity is well...stupid.
The gags connect on a roughly 1 out of 8 scale. Put simply - Aside from a handful of clever or particularly well-designed gags, Scary Movie 2 is about as poor a "movie" as you'll ever see. Characters simply vanish from the plot entirely, the editing is so poor that characters often refer to gags or events that never happened and most of the acting performances are just atrocious. (Yes, I see you hiding in the corner, TORI SPELLING! I'll get to you in a minute!)
Main chick Anna Faris returns from the original and she displays nothing in this movie to imply that she's gonna ever win an Oscar. She's pretty wood. But she can deliver a gag on occasion and she's easy on the eyes. She's this generation's Leslie Nielsen, apparently, so get used to her. Chris Elliot pops up a ridiculously deformed caretaker, and while Chris is often subversively amusing, in this movie he's mainly annoying. Tim Curry shows up as a stuffy professor, and has one good bit when he tries to make two teenage girls make out. Go Tim. James Woods deserves a mention for appearing in a rather silly Exorcist parody which opens the film. He joins Jeff Daniels and Ewan McGregor in the pantheon of "most memorable defecation scenes" ever caught on film.
Tori Spelling is in this movie. You have been warned. It's weird though, because it seems like Tori is in her own little movie here. She hardly ever interacts with any of the other characters and her story line is the weakest link in an already weak endeavor. Even if this movie ended up with a running time of 68 minutes, every Tori scene should have ended up as Easter Eggs on the DVD...Easter Eggs SO secret that nobody could ever access them. (Also on the DVD I'd like to see the myriad gags that are on the preview yet absent from the movie. Late-night snipping at the editor's booth, methinks.)
On the (mildly) plus side, Chris Masterson (Francis from Malcolm in the Middle) offers a very solid performance and earns a lion's share of the best laughs. This kid can deliver a punch line. David Cross (of HBO's Mr. Show) is often rather funny as a handicapped technician guy who consistently (and ridiculously) refuses any assistance from people.
Oh, there's the Wayanseses too. One of 'em does the weed jokes. The other does the "homo" jokes. Some funny, most not. It's like watching an episode of Saturday Night Live...only with more "erect penis" jokes. Some of the gags will strike you, while others thud audibly onto the cheap looking set.Since this review is already longer than this movie's screenplay was, I'll just wrap it up now. Nobody in the universe needs a review of Scary Movie 2 anyway. You know if this stuff is your bag, so you'll definitely decide for yourself. Which is how it should be, anyway.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=4726&reviewer=128
originally posted: 07/15/01 06:42:49
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USA
04-Jul-2001 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
18-Oct-2001
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