Yes, someone actually made a fifth one of these movies. Like you, I also wish they would have left them alone and stopped years ago.
Am I missing something? Was there some massive following that I was completely oblivious to that was begging for another entry? Well, apparently someone thought so, because here it is, Scary Movie 5: the desperate struggle to make one of these movies without the Wayans Brothers funny.
David Zucker is in desperate need of a paycheck, so he recruits his old team of writers to show the world that they can still make movies. What? You were expecting these parody movies to have a self-respecting plot?
I’m not bashing David Zucker. He has worked on some of the classic comedy movies from my childhood, like Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies. At one point, he had a funny bone and knew what he was doing. I’m assuming it was before he met Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the guys who made such box office bombs like Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie.
I’m impressed with these two. Honestly, I am. Out of the six writers for the first two Scary Movie entries, which were actually kind of funny, these two are known as being the least funny. Despite this, they are the only ones that have gone on to make other movies.
But for something that’s supposed to be a comedy, it’s fascinating when 90 percent of the jokes have the punch line of “Hey, this movie/TV show/other piece of media is currently popular.” Although, in this movie’s case, they were popular last year, and even now are considered dated.
Really, let’s take a quick look at some of the movies Scary Movie 5 is “parodying”. Such movies include Paranormal Activity, Mama, Scream 4 and The Cabin in the Woods.
Paranormal Activity, at this point, has been parodied so many times that there are parodies of the parodies. And Scream 4 and Cabin in the Woods– really? You guys are really parodying movies which are self-aware parodies? It’s like imitating the class clown. It doesn’t make you funny; it makes you look unoriginal and desperate for attention.
The cast list for this movie is nothing too impressive either. Amidst the people who only appear in these lines of movies and nowhere else are celebrities like Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan and Mike Tyson, celebrities that could very well be funny, but in the end are used for the punch line of “these guys are famous, that’s funny right?”
I’m not the only one that’s been saying this either. Marlon Wayans, one of the writers/actors from the first two Scary Movies, bashed this flick back in January.
If this movie was a documentary detailing these celebrities trying to get into the spotlight again, it could have been a much funnier film. Better yet, they didn’t even have to be so self referential. Just boot Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer off of the project and you’re already a step in the right direction.
But at this point it’s too late. The damage is done. Many people have lost 10 to 15 dollars that could have been used more productively, and now David Zucker has something that he’d be ashamed to put on his resume. All in all, I didn’t like it.
