Hollywood sinks to a new low...

Rating: Null/10 (14 September 2002)

First they give Jim Carrey something other than a mop job, then they let the Farrelly Brothers make a film that isn't a documentary about the use of pooper scoopers, then they give the Wayans Brothers a budget to work with. Will the people in charge of the green light at Hollywood ever learn?
It's ironic, really, that people from In Living Colour actually have careers some ten to twelve years after the show was cancelled. I don't know what Jim Carrey did on that show to convince anyone that he should get money for anything other than being severely brain damaged, but after Scary Movie 2, he seems like the lesser of two evils. Which is also ironic considering that the original Scary Movie was actually quite funny in places. Maybe this is a call for more editors and script doctors to be employed in Hollywood?
I won't get into critiquing all of the points in this film that others have already bashed to death. It's just a waste of time. What I will do is go over a few things that I found ridiculously wrong with the film. First of all, basing the majority of a film around a similar setting or premise to The Haunting is only going to get you in trouble. The actual film was an unmitigated disaster, even when Owen Wilson got his head chopped off, so trying to satirise it in any way, shape, or form is a bad idea - it satirised itself very effectively.
Secondly, when you're choosing source materials or directors to satirise, it is generally a good idea not to pick someone who is obviously at least twice as intelligent as you are (although that could mean billions of people for the Wayans brothers). I am, of corse, referring to the utterly pathetic and childish attempts to satirise Hollow Man. Whereas the original made a good, satirical swipe at the empty morality of the New Testament, as well as provided a good story about a generally decent guy gone power-mad, the satire here was obviously conceived and executed with no idea whatsoever as to what the film was about. This is hardly surprising since, in a Christian-dominated society such as America, hardly anyone is going to properly understand what Hollow Man was about, but trying to match wits with one of Western Europe and Hollywood's most ingenious political satirists with a string of fart/body fluid/stoner gags is like trying to take on the entire American armed forces with a .22 - it just ain't going to work.
Lastly, while the America-centric humour of a lot of the gags in Scary Movie was countered by the possibility of seeing the original commercials or films, the former being shown on a "greatest commercials" show ("Whazzup!" is actually an ad for Budweiser beer for all those people from the antipodes who don't watch "greatest commercials" shows), it falls flat in Scary Movie 2. The attempt to satirise the Nike ad was cut down in flames here by the fact that NOBODY had seen the commercial in this country. The fact that the satire was about as funny as a basketball match didn't help very much, either. Even though I like to think I am more cultured than most of my peers, I am also stumped on what the hell that gag involving Shorty's "brain" was about.
So to sum up, Scary Movie 2 is an unfunny film written by a bunch of juvenile dipsticks, much like the original, but this time nobody thought to edit the script and bring some semblance of humour into the film. "What the hell," thought the studio execs. "We'll just print this crap up and show it on the screen - the kids will love it." Well, sorry, Dimension, but adolescents are generally far more intelligent than films like this one give them credit for, and most adults like myself outgrew this sort of drivel so long ago that we can hardly remember when it happened.