A funny thing happened on the way to the movie theater tonight. The third installment of the Scary Movie series is not only PG-13, but is directed by comedy legend/genius David Zucker. Although he took over a series from the Wayans Brothers, Zucker turned it around into something almost completely new. It isn't quite in the same vein as his one true classic, Airplane!, but it shows how he should stay away from movies like My Boss's Daughter and go back into the spoof genre which got him, and his team, off the ground.
The first movie based its main parodies around Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, and the second was mainly revolved around The Haunting. Scary Movie 3 has two central spoofs: The Ring and Signs. The protagonist from the first two, Cindy (Anna Faris), is now an anchorwoman who investigates a mysterious videotape while odd crop circles appear. Many celebrities have cameos in parodies of recent movies.
Instead of extremely crude sexual humor, Zucker knew that you don't need lewdness to make people laugh. One of the reasons why Airplane! was so great is because it was only rated PG; almost all of the humor was situational and not just shock value. Sure, Scary Movie 3 had its share of crude humor, but it wasn't as over-the-top and unnecessary as the other two's were. Instead, what he did was take his parodies and make them seem possible. For example, George Carlin plays The Architect (a parody of The Matrix Reloaded) who spends all of his time alone in a giant room. He gets so lonely, he `bonds' with his chair, what most people would do.
Also, what made Scary Movie 3 funny is how it pointed out the faults of the movies that it is spoofing. Throughout Signs, Mel Gibson doesn't even mention farming once, although he lives out on a farm. Charlie Sheen, who mocks the Gibson character, continuously talks about it for the first few minutes he's on screen. In 8 Mile, one of the things I hated about it was how everyone was speaking with huge words; here, parodies of those characters do exactly this.
Scary Movie 3 did have some gags that didn't work, especially around the middle of the film. It seems that Zucker just wanted to move as quickly as possible and instead of making it even 90 minutes (it's about 75) he just wanted to make a quick, short parody film. Although Carlin's character was okay, Eddie Griffin and Queen Latifah's characters (as characters from The Matrix) weren't utilized as much as they should have been. Also, Leslie Nielsen, who has been in most of the Zucker spoofs, has a small role as the President and plays a typical Nielsen character. I would have liked to have seen more of him, but at least he was able to deliver a classic Airplane! line.
Scary Movie 3 is one of the funniest movies of the year, with its almost continuous laughter. It's probably the best one out of the three in the series.
My rating: 7/10
Rated PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual humor, language, comic violence and drug references.
