Scary Movie

REVIEW
The motive of Scary Movie is to tweak and make fun of all the self-serious postmodern horror flicks like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer that revitalized the long-dead slasher genre. But those flicks themselves were sly send-ups of the genre, poking playful fun at the very cinematic clichés and conventions that its characters (as well as audience members) were subconsciously weaned on, while reinventing them for a hipper generation. With Scary Movie, co-writer-director Wayans scores the admirable feat of spoofing a spoof. Like any pop-cultural shooting gallery, the film fires away with goofy sight gags, double entendres and enough raucous frat-boy raunchiness to make even the horniest sex-starved teenager blush. Some of the jokes hit the bull's eye, some of them fall flat with a thud. Of course, the more versed you are in film genres, the more gags you'll appreciate. Shawn Wayans is a scream as a frustrated nellie straight boy just dying to burst out of the closet. By the way, Scary Movie was the original title for Wes Craven's 1996 horror flick before the studio changed it to Scream. Same studio. Oooooo! Spooky!