Spoiler Alert
My wife and I pull up to the theater and it’s packed — unusually packed. It’s Father’s Day, and what better way to celebrate than watching Scary Movie, right? We’ve seen all the other movies up to this point, so this is one of the last ones we’re catching in the theater. My wife wanted to hit an early-morning showing so she could take me out on the town afterward, but I opted for the noon showing, because I’m going to need some kind of margarita to get through this film. Something tells me I’m going to need it.
With our matching margaritas in hand, we walk in. Wow — it’s just me, her, and like two other people. Okay, so that traffic in the parking lot wasn’t for this movie. It was probably for the Minions.
The movie opens on Teyana Taylor sitting at a bar, waiting for her blind date. It’s the killer, of course. The acting is pretty bad, but I think that’s the style they’re going for. Teyana’s character gets talked into going outside — Scream-style — but she doesn’t get killed. Instead, she gets lured into an alley and then gets instant backup from her homeboys out of New York. It’s super silly. (Turns out this whole bit is a send-up of One Battle After Another, with Teyana playing a heightened, sassy version of herself, waving an award around like a weapon and shouting about the revolution.) This can’t be the real movie, because it’s way too early to kill the villain. Cut to the actual movie, and it turns out our protagonists are watching a film called Horror Movie — so that’s the joke.
More silliness. Shawn Wayans is still playing his obviously gay character, Ray, and playing it up. The joke doesn’t really work anymore, because being gay isn’t seen as a bad thing by a lot of people from Gen Z and under, so it doesn’t hit the same way it did back in the ’90s. Ray walks into a church — like the one from Sinners — and it turns into twerking and dancing while he pretends not to be gay. My wife whispers to me, “This is not good, right?” She was looking for reassurance, because I felt the same way she did. I want to really like this movie, but maybe I just don’t get it anymore. Maybe I’ve outgrown the silliness. I’m happy that Marlon Wayans and company got to revive the series, but man, it’s hard for me to watch. This is going to be a one-and-done.
The movie jumps around between genres without a real, solid storyline. Regina Hall is still playing the loud, no-shame character (Brenda Meeks), and she does it well — she’s still got the energy. But some of the other older cast members actually feel old now. I felt the same way when I watched Coming 2 America. I wanted to love it, and I just didn’t. Sometimes too much time has passed, and the approach to the jokes doesn’t land the same. Oh, and by the way — there’s a castration in this film. Wow. And a guy lights a woman’s clitoris on fire. Way too far.
There were two scenes that actually made me laugh. The first was the Get Out parody, where the Ghostface character tells him to “SINK.” Marlon goes “Noooo,” his legs scrunch up into the couch, and his eyes bug out. I laughed just because it’s so ridiculous. The second was a fake biopic trailer you think is going to be about Michael Jackson — Kenan Thompson turns up as the King of Pop, and then it cuts to a trailer for an instantly-greenlit sequel called “Jermaine.” I died laughing. That was a good one. Or maybe I was just tipsy — either way, I was laughing, hard. Probably because I’d just recently seen the Michael biopic. It was hilarious. Kenan is legit funny.
By about three-quarters of the way through, the movie literally started to feel like work to watch. I mean, it ends with the main characters’ asses out. Damn.
In all honesty, I really wanted to like this movie. I root for the Wayans family in general. But this one was hard to watch. I’m glad it exists. Sorry — don’t be mad — but yeah, it’s not good. Hey, at least I paid for my ticket. Oh, and by the way: the film was budgeted at just $30 million and has already made its money back several times over. As of late June it’s pulled in more than $200 million worldwide — a genuine box office success, despite a C+ CinemaScore and a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes. Review-proof, apparently. It even pushed the whole Scary Movie franchise past a billion dollars. So the Wayans are still winning — unlike that He-Man / Masters of the Universe reboot, which couldn’t say the same.
