Scary Movie or ‘Last Summer I Screamed Because Friday the 13th Fell on Halloween’ and ‘Scream If You Know What I Did Last Halloween’ is the original title of the Scream series. This is series in which Scary Movie spoofs, that along with I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Blair Witch Project and even the Budweiser ‘Wassup’ advert gets the Wayans brothers spoofage.

The characters are the typical horror genre stereotypes. Cindy is a do gooder who does not see a bad side to anyone and is, of course, a virgin. Brenda is the loud-mouthed friend of hers, an exact opposite. Buffy is the egotistic, self absorbed, big breasted and popular girl of B.A. Corpse (haha) Highschool who goes out with Greg the typical Jock and a certified ‘Dumbass’. Bobby is the trailer trash boyfriend of Cindy who cant wait to have sex with her and drops some none too subtle hints about it. Ray is a bit different, he goes out with Brenda, another jock but he is slightly confused over his sexuality.

Yes you heard (or read) the word ‘gross’. While this is a spoof this is in no way, shape or form on par with the likes of The Naked Gun or Airplane!, those movies had plenty of big laughs without the crudeness, Scary Movie does rely on the gross out gags a number of times. If your expecting a half intelligent spoof then don’t because it simply wont happen if you watch Scary Movie, it is more in kin to the recent deluge of gross out teen comedies such as Road Trip and the awful Freddy Got Fingered (yet to be released in the UK). Yet Scary Movie does have some good ideas hidden away behind the gross front it plays to people.

However most of the time, as mentioned before, it plays for shocks more than good laughs. Scary Movie does push the limits of good taste somewhat, and it becomes more than apparent with the character Doofy. Doofy (the Scary Movie equivalent to Dewey) plays the police officer however he’s 25 years old, goes to Special Ed and has an attraction to the vacuum cleaner. Many people were annoyed at the fact that the film made fun out of people with special needs and I can see their point. The character, admittedly, needs to be there, but he could have quite easily have been thick than retarded because you can feel uncomfortable laughing at him all the time. Then there is the American Pie style sex scene with Cindy and Bobby; it is very disgusting but also very funny to watch because it takes what American Pie did that little bit further. One of the stand out points of the film for grossness and funniness is the Miss Mann part (work it out for yourself people) it has me laughing every time I watch that part.

First off I have to say that you WILL need to know the plots of Scream & I Know What You Did Last Summer, to get the most from the movie or else you will have no idea what parts are meant to be funny from the parts which are not. Scary Movie is spoofing specific films so it does help if you know them so you can follow the plot and can pick out key points of where it is at by comparing it with Scream.

The acting isn’t too bad but there is certainly room for improvement. The characters do ham up their roles a lot, this may be to spoof the genre, but it comes across as bad acting. Also Scary Movie lets you view some of the most over acting background characters you will ever see in a movie, which is pretty laughable, but for the wrong reasons. Apart from the Doofy character, Shorty also fails to hit the mark. He is supposed to be the Randy from Scream but all he does is do drugs all the time and laugh like an idiot. This is very annoying because you feel as though he should be telling you the ‘rules of a horror movie’ (which he does in the trailer) rather than getting high all the time. Considering he is played by one of the Wayans brothers makes it all the more hard to follow why the didn’t improve on his character.

Another problem is sometimes the jokes do fall flat, a lot of it has to do with the movie being, sometimes, very American style cultured, so us Brits could be missing out on the significance of some of the jokes made, however that’s a problem with most comedies because all jokes are not always universal.
It’s not scary but it is fairly funny and it is also very gross, that’s what you get with Scary Movie. It really is worth watching it to see horror movies getting spoofed, even if you don’t laugh as much as you want to. Scary Movie did prove very popular with audiences (though not with critics) and it is easy to see why, it’s a funny, unserious film which isn’t afraid to shock the audience.