Scary Movie 3Year: 2003 Director: David Zucker Written by: Craig Mazin, Pat Proft Threat: Ghost Weapon of Choice: Shovel Based upon: Parodies films such as The Ring (2002), Signs, and 8 Mile. |
Other movies in this series:
Scary Movie
Scary Movie 2
Rish Outfield's reviews
Yes, I hated the second one. I didn't even love the first one. But I paid to see the
third one . . . in the theater.
Why? Two simple words: I have no idea.
In a parody of The Ring,
Signs, and 8 Mile, three great horror
films of last year, Scary Movie 3 follows Cindy Campbell (Anna Farris), now
a television newswoman, who is tracking both a cursed videotape that kills anyone who
watches it and mysterious crop circles that seem to be leading to an alien invasion, while
romancing a simple white boy who wants to be a rapper.
I won't lie to you, I laughed quite a bit through this movie. After all, David Zucker did direct
the funniest film of all time. Leslie Nielsen, who played the President, was his typical
serious/funny/clueless self (and though I used to adore him, I feel Leslie Nielsen has played
that character to death), Charlie Sheen and Anna Farris were good, the dialogue seemed pretty
sharp. And hey, there were no Wayans brothers to be found!
There were quite a few moments that fell flat, as seem to always be the case in this type of films,
but Scary Movie 3 worked a lot better than Zucker's last couple of films (did
anybody even SEE My Boss's Daughter?) and miles above
Scary Movie 2.
Though the Wayans Brothers were long gone, there were still a lot of black characters,
ethnic gags, and jokes that involved people saying "Niggah." But it WAS pretty funny the
first time Leslie Nielsen did it. Also funny was the abuse they dished out on the main kid.
I loved Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense but the psycho/psychic, inbred,
hollow-eyed devil-boy in The Ring really bugged me. So it was cool to see this
version's kid get drop-kicked, punched, and run over by cars.
And isn't that truly what unnerving blank-faced psychic children are for?
Not all the jokes worked, probably only half, but some were hilarious (Regina Hall cursing
at her class, the Michael Jackson Others
parody, donuts and hot dogs, a lot of the physical humour). I hate to tell you this folks,
but the tried and true jokes of vomiting (repeated THRICE) and hitting people in the crotch
(repeated about fifty times) were almost consistently funny. There was one scene
parodying the most frightening moment in Signs that had me laughing so hard
it hurt. Good work, boys.
There were nice attacks on The Matrix Reloaded and Pootie Tang, two
movies which may be one in the same. I'll have to do more research on this subject to
know for sure. There was also an acknowledgment of what I thought only I recognized
was wrong with the opening of The Ring, which always infuriated me but I now
feel vindicated over. I went with my sister who thinks the American version of The
Ring is the evilest movie since . . . I don't know, The Journey of Natty Gann,
and I must admit there is something really chilling about it. Case in point, when Scary
Movie 3 repeated a couple of The Ring's scares, they strangely, somehow still
managed to be scary. I think my sister was tempted to get up and leave the theater (as she
did at The Ring).
My Lord, how evil IS that movie?
Not as awful as the second one, and not nearly as offensive as the original (this one actually
garnered a PG-13), I liked Scary Movie 3 best of all.
Total Skulls: 11
Sequel | ||
Sequel setup | ||
Rips off earlier film | The Ring, Signs | |
Horror film showing on TV/in theater in movie | ||
Future celebrity appears | ||
Former celebrity appears | ||
Bad title | ||
Bad premise | ||
Bad acting | ||
Bad dialogue | ||
Bad execution | ||
MTV Editing | ||
OTS | ||
Girl unnecessarily gets naked | ||
Wanton sex | ||
Death associated with sex | ||
Unfulfilled promise of nudity | ||
Characters forget about threat | ||
Secluded location | ||
Power is cut | ||
Phone lines are cut | ||
Someone investigates a strange noise | ||
Someone runs up stairs instead of going out front door | ||
Camera is the killer | ||
Victims cower in front of a window/door | ||
Victim locks self in with killer | ||
Victim running from killer inexplicably falls | ||
Toilet stall scene | ||
Shower/bath scene | ||
Car stalls or won't start | ||
Cat jumps out | ||
Fake scare | ||
Laughable scare | ||
Stupid discovery of corpse | ||
Dream sequence | ||
Hallucination/Vision | ||
No one believes only witness | ||
Crazy, drunk, old man knows the truth | ||
Warning goes unheeded | ||
Music detracts from scene | ||
Death in first five minutes | ||
x years before/later | ||
Flashback sequence | ||
Dark and stormy night | ||
Killer doesn't stay dead | ||
Killer wears a mask | ||
Killer is in closet | ||
Killer is in car with victim | ||
Villain is more sympathetic than heroes | ||
Unscary villain/monster | ||
Beheading | ||
Blood fountain | ||
Blood spatters - camera, wall, etc. | ||
Poor death effect | ||
Excessive gore | ||
No one dies at all | ||
Virgin survives | ||
Geek/Nerd survives | ||
Little kid lamely survives | ||
Dog/Pet miraculously survives | ||
Unresolved subplots | ||
"It was all a dream" ending | ||
Unbelievably happy ending | ||
Unbelievably crappy ending | ||
What the hell? |