I think Dunkin Donuts was trying to get their B Team some experience this morning, because that bagel left much to be desired: primarily the butter I was hoping would be on it.
Soon I'm going to try to post something other than some media review to show how much more profound I can be than Ebert and the Siskel stand-in or whatever music reviewer whose name people might recognize.
Not now, though.
#4: Scary Movie
I'm not sure what I was doing in middle school when this movie came out. Maybe I was watching Christina Aguilera's Genie in a Bottle video a suspicious amount of times. Maybe I was cutting the elastic ankles off of my sweatpants because I'd finally attained self-awareness. Maybe I was shutting off the AIM notification noises because the charm had worn off and they officially annoyed the shit out of me. Again, I'm not sure. Somehow I missed this movie that everyone loved so much, though.
I survived, though. I made it through the halls of junior high without knowing a single quote the same way I made it without ever buying Pokemon. I decided to come back and amend my miss because a good friend of mine absolutely loves this movie and we needed something to do on a weekday night.
Who thought they would see a review--even an informal one--for Scary Movie well into the year 2009? I can't give any insight into this film both because it's already been said and because there isn't much insight to be given. For as childish as it was I actually thought it was a fairly good parody. It falls into that classic Wayans brothers trap of overexplaining jokes and utilizing some humor so obvious you're not quite sure who they were hoping to make laugh with it, but I was shocked to see some of the subtleties in the movie that were legitimately clever. Nuance is not a word that comes to mind when I think Wayans.
The key to the film prevailing as a lighthearted farce in the vein of Airplane! and Hot Shots and not getting stuck at adolescent shtick is a well-defined balance between parody and random humor. It was actually a clever critique of horror movies in that it followed the formula so strictly that the presentation of the film alone served as a punchline. But the irrelevant jokes that stepped out of the parody to remind the viewer that the movie doesn't see itself as some New Yorker style satire made it immature, but in a good way. One of the funniest moments in the movie to me was at the beginning when Shawn is at his locker and he takes a step back to ask his friend, "Does this shirt make me look gay?" Because I'm probably the only person who hadn't seen this movie until now I won't explain the rest, but for such a childish joke it was so perfectly out of place that it gets a laugh out of you.
I don't regret not spending a week's allowance to rush out and see this movie way back when, because there weren't enough laugh out loud moments for me to understand the hype even for an adolescent crowd. Seeing it for free in my living room with the Sno-Caps I bought for $1.69 instead of $4.50, however, is entirely acceptable.
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