Remaking a rerun

>> Scary Movie is enough already

by MATTHEW HAYS

With his latest film, director Keenen Ivory Wayans attempts to do for slasher movies what Airplane! and The Big Bus did for disaster movies. In particular, there are gratuitous stabs at Scream and, in a flashback sequence, I Know What You Did Last Summer.

There are certain problems with basing an entire spoof and ripoff on Scream, problems that obviously didn't occur to Wayans and his merry band of screenwriters. Scream itself was a very funny satire already, a clever, witty and fairly fresh take on teen slasher films, in particular Halloween, the slasher film which launched the late-'70s/early-'80s spate of slice-and-dice teen-market-oriented films. Halloween itself was inspired by Psycho, Hitchcock's 1960 masterpiece, widely considered one of the greatest horror movies ever and generally credited with changing the evolution of the genre for all time.

But the fact that Wayans is already dealing with material that's twice reheated doesn't dissuade him from being derivative. Nope, that would ruin all those endless sight and verbal gags that Wayans is convinced are so very funny and fresh. The screenplay doesn't stretch itself one bit--god forbid anyone might think that some creative thought went into this. Instead, Scary Movie is literally a scene-by-scene remake of Scream. (If Miramax, the same studio that backed the Scream trilogy, weren't behind this, there would undoubtedly be a copyright lawsuit in the works.)

If you're going to do a satire, it might be an idea to actually be somewhat cleverer than the source material you're mocking. But Scream was a mighty clever little movie; it put screenwriter Kevin Williamson on the map and skewered the genre, making us laugh while frightening us at the same time.

Scary Movie isn't the least bit scary, though in fairness it does offer up some laughs. There's a Blair Witch moment which I did find pretty funny. But overall, the laughs can't be stretched far enough to sustain this thing. Didn't they learn with Scream 3? Everyone's just about had it with the slasher thing, anyway. Still, some nondiscriminating moviegoers will probably make this a hit. Wayans clearly decided to heed that old warning about never underestimating the intelligence of your audience. Sadly enough, it'll probably pay off. :

Scary Movie opens Friday, July 7