This Time with Aliens

Due to the relative underperformance of Scary Movie 2 in comparison to the original Scary Movie (bearing in mind that the sequel cost over two times as much to film and yet made $130 Mil less than the first one, even if it was a financial success otherwise), the studio heads at Dimension Films (aka, one of the studios run by the Weinsteins, those awful pieces of shit) elected to remove the Wayans brother (Keenan Ivory, Shawn, and Marlon) from the future of the series. Instead, directing duties for the film were handed over to David Zucker (of the ZAZ collective) so that he could work his parody charm on the film.

Zucker was in something of a directorial wilderness. His last effort, My Boss’s Daughter, hadn’t caught fire at the Box Office, and that followed onto Zucker’s previous effort in the parody genre, BASEketball, which also failed to live up to expectations at the Box Office despite Zucker working with hot up-and-comers in the comedy world, Trey Parker and Matt Stone (of South Park). Needless to say, Zucker needed a win while Dimension hoped that slapping his name, famous for Airplane!, would somehow goose the Scary Movie franchise back into relevance.

The results for Dimension certainly were all they hoped. Made on a budget similar to Scary Movie 2 (upwards of $48 Mil), the film brought in a respectable $220 Mil, a nice rebound from the second film (even if it wasn’t quite up to the heights of the original). The film did this by going back to what worked in the first film: a simple parody of an existing film, with a smattering of references and allusions to other films, making a pastiche of pop culture at the time that people could point to and say, “hey, I know that movie.” Now, that’s not to say that Scary Movie 2 deviated too far from the pop culture “slap everything against the wall to see what sticks” mentality, but the lack of a single, cohesive vision, (i.e. a film to directly parody) did certainly hurt proceedings. Scary Movie 3 is a more focused, and honestly more enjoyable, experience than the film that directly came before.

The plot of the film centers, once again, on Cindy Campbell (a returning Anna Faris), who currently works as a reporter and on-air talent for Channel 8 News out of Washington, D.C. She starts seeing reports of weird occurrences out in the sticks, crop circles showing up and weird sightings in the sky. Her boss won’t let her cover it, though, because the story isn’t violent and/or sexy enough to draw attention. But she can’t drop it, not when she feels a story come on that might just make her career.

However, she also has troubles much closer to home. Her friend, Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), recently watched a tape that, purportedly, will lead to a person’s death seven days after they see the film. Seven days later, when Cindy is hanging out with Brenda, a weird girl comes out of the television and kills Brenda. Cindy takes the tape, but then her nephew, Cody (Drew Mikuska), watches it, forcing Cindy to start investigating the video. This takes her far and wide, but eventually back to that farm outside D.C. where all the weird trouble began…

Functionally Scary Movie 3 acts as a mashup of The Ring and Signs, although it leans much more heavily on the plot and details of The Ring more than anything else. Cindy centers the A-plot about the creepy girl killing people that watch her video (functionally stealing the whole plot of The Ring with little in the way of changes) while Charlie Sheen's Tom Logan, a former minister turned farmer, is the focus of the B-plot. The two sides only really come together due to George Logan (Simon Rex), Tom’s brother and Cindy’s love interest, who unites to the two sides as the plots focus in on each other.

Coming out in 2003, I have to credit the film for being halfway current with its references. Unlike the first Scary Movie, which was primarily based on a film that was already four years old at the time (Scream), The Ring and Signs had only been out for a year each, and were still very active in audiences’ minds, by the time this third film came along. This also goes for many of the other references in the film, including parodies of The Matrix Reloaded and 8-Mile. Now, notably, these aren’t horror movies that the film is parodying, and frankly the movie doesn’t really try to mine any horror from the films it’s working around… but then, neither the previous two movies, either, so that just goes with the territory.

Outside these non-horror references (which frequently go on a little too long for my tastes), the film is able to get some real mileage out of the parodies it plays with. The material based on The Ring mirrors that film’s style and substance, getting some good laughs out of the material. While the Signs side isn’t as strong, Sheen shows real comedic presence in the film, mining laughs out of reactions even while the material around him gives him little to do. The Signs portion basically amounts to the film going, “remember Signs? Isn’t it funny that we remember it, too?” It’s just there, and it does work outside of Sheen.

But that’s maybe why I actually like this film better than the previous two: the actors here are much better in their roles. I’m going to say something that will probably annoy a lot of fans: I don’t much care for the comedic performances of Marlon and Shawn Wayans. Their roles in the previous films grated on my nerves (especially in the case of Marlon, who overacted and screeched all his lines). The fact that they aren’t in this movie, with the space they would have taken up instead given to legitimate comedians (Kevin Hart, D. L. Hughley, Eddie Griffin, and Anthony Anderson, just to name a few) helps to kick the actual humor in this film up a notice and make it all go down much smoother.

I’m sure the steady hand of a director that understands the genre helps as well. While this is nowhere near Zucker’s best work (he’s nowhere near as good on his own as he was working with his friends in ZAZ), Zucker gives this film solid presence. He knows when to do a good cut-away gag, when to let a joke linger, when to have something go on-and-on until it crosses the line twice and gets funny again. Set pieces work more often in this film than I ever felt they did in either Scary Movie before this, and I have to credit Zucker for it. Zucker does when he can with the script to make it work.

I still wouldn’t classify this film as a great in the parody genre. There’s plenty of times where jokes don’t land, where scenes drag on, and where you feel like there’s supposed to be something funny going on and nothing happens. All that being said, this is still a decently amusing movie that got more than a few chuckles out of it. I don’t know that I’d ever want to watch it again, but that doesn’t stop this film, weirdly, from being the best Scary Movie that we’ve looked at yet. The bar for the series really was that low.