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The Wayans Brothers burst onto the cultural scene with their riotously funny sketch-comedy show, In Living Color. Its scathing satires and outrageous sketches launched not only the Wayans Brothers' careers but also those of Jim Carrey, David Allen Grier, and Jamie Foxx. In fact, the Brothers Wayans have often been overshadowed by their co-stars, that is until the surprise box-office triumph of Scary Movie.

Scary Movie isn't a typical Hollywood success story. The movie has had more potential release dates than a new version of Windows and has been through more names than Prince. Originally set to release last fall as Scream if
You Know What I Did Last Halloween (or something like that), it was repeatedly pushed back on Dimension Films' schedule. But it's caught gold in a summer filled with gross-out comedies, surpassing even the shine of Jim Carrey's mega-star.

This one stars Anna Faris as Cindy, a virginal teenager stalked by a mask-wearing killer. She's "assisted" by her horny boyfriend Bobby (Jon Abrahams, Outside Providence), her buxom friend Buffy (Shannon Elizabeth, American Pie), a gay football player named Ray (Shawn Wayans), a drug-smoking Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and Brenda (Regina Hall, The Best Man). Even more than most comedies, there's almost no plot to speak of. Instead, the characters jump from scene to scene, spoofing the horror genre with sight gags, innuendo, and lots of bodily fluids.

In the tradition of parodies, there are a number of references to other movies, including the Scream trilogy, the I Know What You Did pair, and the Blair Witch Project (soon to be plural). Other non-horror targets include The Matrix, Usual Suspects, and TV's Dawson's Creek. But like The Simpsons' film gags, the reference itself is supposed to be the joke. Scary Movie doesn't try to satirize those cultural "icons," but instead just transports
them into a ludicrous context and hopes the audience will laugh right along. That the audience does is more a testimony to the power of an in-joke than any cleverness on the part of the writers.

That unfortunately is true of much of Scary Movie's humor. The opening joke concerns flatulence, which is supposed to be funny since it's Baywatch babe Carmen Electra doing the farting. Whatever. And so begins a series of bathroom jokes, though the movie's sexual humor far outpaces its grosser cousin. Scary Movie is especially obsessed with a particular sexual act that reaches its apex when one female character is crowned Miss Fellatio. I'll admit that some of the gags are pretty funny, but you don't feel good about it afterwards. There is also one moment of surprising grossness. I can't describe it in a family magazine, but it's safe to say that it's
both shocking and disgusting, which is impressive in our desensitized age. It'd be nice to think that this kind of comedy is running out of steam, but that'd be too optimistic.

Despite all of the jokes about sexual positions and bodily fluids, Scary Movie doesn't echo There's Something About Mary as much as it hearkens back to the great Airplane movies. The everything-but-the-kitchen-sink style of
jokes means that even if one falls flat, there's another one coming around the corner that might tickle your funny bone. So though Carmen Electra's farting sequence fails to deliver, that's followed by the hilarious sequence of her clothes being ripped off as she runs through a sprinkler (trust me, it's funny). Unfortunately, writers Shawn & Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg, and Aaron Seltzer don't incorporate Airplane's spectacular word-play and ingeniously subtle visual jokes. Instead, everything is played to the back of the house, which has the effect of undermining the humor.

What's most distressing is how little of In Living Color's social commentary shows up here. On their television show, the Wayans Brothers introduced some of the most savage racial satire since Richard Pryor, a satire which cut both ways. I'll never forget a sketch where a clueless Arsenio Hall interviews D.C. mayor Marion Barry: Hall--"Now I've been told that you were in a movie." Barry--"Uh, I thought we weren't going to talk about that." Hall--"I heard you were smokin'." And a parody of Michael Jackson's video for "Black and White" centers around Jackson trying to figure out if he's black or white. The amazing kicker is when Jackson is arrested and exclaims, "I guess I must be black."

Precious little of that wit makes it into Scary Movie. Whether the Wayans chose to play it safe or just didn't care to stretch their talent, nobody in the audience will be offended by what they see, at least not for any good reasons. Whether they'll enjoy it or not is another matter. I think the best summary I can give for Scary Movie came from my friend Garth who left the movie theater giggling while remarking, "That was stupid." 

J. Robert Parks 07/17/2000