Scary Movie

I must be getting young – I actually found this film funny when every worthy reviewer in every respectable publication in town has been busy telling us how puerile & unfunny it is.At least it was funny for 10 – 15 minutes.Yep – I’m afraid to say I think the worthy reviewers were right.

This is not a film in the traditional sense – traditional being things like plot & characterisation – rather than a collection of gags, loosely held together by spoofing recent mainly ‘scary’ films such as ‘Scream’, ‘Scream 2′, ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’, ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘The Matrix’ – in many cases directly copying scenes from those films & building gags around them.

Some of these gags are very funny; the problem is: a) most of them aren’t, & b) there aren’t enough of them – there’s more filler here than a plasterer on speed rebuilding the Berlin Wall. Number 1 one rule for this film seems to be “if you can’t think of a decent gag to spin this out for an hour & half just put in something rude or gross – that’ll make the kids laugh anyway”. (Hello – isn’t this an R18?)

OK, Conspiracy Theory time: one of the main group of characters is a bunch of dopeheads with enough intelligence & sophistication to make Beavis & Butthead look like Siskel & Ebert. My theory is this: THESE GUYS ARE NOT ACTORS – THESE ARE ACTUALLY THE WRITERS PLAYING THEMSELVES! If they’re not they probably could be. If any bodily excretion can be produced in any way, as much as possible, lets have it, & as much as possible! Can’t think of anything funny – get the sweetie-pie lead girl to fart in the bath, or the Doofy cop to poo his pants, lets see bucketloads of snot falling out of someone’s nose – yeah, great! Er, no it’s not actually, it’s just smelly.

Having said that, I thought some of the rudest & most controversial gags were some of the funniest – a man being speared in the head by a penis through a loo door, & a boy’s body becoming emaciated after plastering his girlfriend to the ceiling with a massive ejaculation. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, because there are some very funny moments in between the dross here – but NO! This IS bad – most of the comic acting is extremely hammy, & the direction is just plain clumsy.

Best thing about this film? The trailer – watch that & you’ve already seen most of the decent gags – otherwise you’ll just get bored. Even the kids weren’t laughing much.