Ridiculously and painfully bad... they should have kept their promise.

Rating: 1/10 (12 August 2002)

A quick warning. Some things I say here might be construed as spoilers. So if you're really worried about me giving away some joke or plot point of Scary
Movie 2, beware my spoilers and read no further. But personally, I don't think anything could spoil this movie any more than it has spoiled itself.
Part of the advertising campaign for Scary Movie was that there would be no
sequel. I wish with every fiber of my critical mind that the Wayans had been true to their word.
Scary Movie was quite funny. Somehow, they managed to successfully parody
a self-parodying genre. This, I think, is mostly because the creative team wasn't afraid to push limits of tastefulness (-lessness), and there was a certain
innocence to their humour. A crass innocence, lacking in the sophistication of a Zucker/Abrahams production like Airplane! or The Naked Gun, but a simplicity of style in the way the jokes were told. While neither film has a grasp on comic pacing, the jokes of the first film still landed. And I laughed.
Scary Movie 2, however, is a complete and total failure on all levels. Riding the success of the first, the Wayans pump up the bodily-fluid jokes, none of which are amusing. Some, in fact, are direct replicas of the jokes in the first. They also seem to believe that it is funny when someone says "motherf***er" for no
reason, in an inappropriate instance. And it can be funny. When used
sparingly, the shock value of that kind of gag breaks the tension of a scene, and with a proper set up, will illicit laughter. It is not funny, however, when that is the punch line of literally every other exchange of dialogue (variations include
characters saying: "f*** this," and "shut the f*** up," among others).

This relates directly to one of the fundamental flaws of the film, which is that there is never any tension, or solid foundation of a joke, ever established. A great joke starts out like a string pulled tighter and tighter until one of two things happens: either it breaks from its own tension or it is cut. Mike Myers is the master of pulling the string until it snaps of its own accord; as in the Austin Powers movies, he holds off on a punch line, or drags one out, for so long that it eventually becomes funny (consider his villains laughing diabolically for two whole minutes in the first film). Either that, or the setup, with no superfluous distractions, is clean, taut, and then cut at the appropriate moment. In Scary Movie 2, the Wayans try and fit so many stupid things into one scene or one
joke, that, as a result, the setup is never clean, and the punch line never lands. Rarely, in fact, is there a punch line. Also, we see characters repeatedly cutting the tension by commenting on their surroundings (self-reference is dangerous
in comedy... it fails as often as it works). At one moment, a character can deliver an absurd line with no one noticing it, and then in the next, a character might comment on a similar line by saying "that's a stupid thing to say." Consider two situations: in the first, the audience sees some food tampered with, or tainted in a disgusting manner, which is then consumed by a character in the film. In the second, the character sees the food tainted, is obviously and vocally disgusted, and simply does not eat. The first can be (though not always) funny because
the reaction is elicited on the part of the AUDIENCE. The AUDIENCE should
feel disgusted, or should laugh at the situation, not the characters. We know something the characters do not. This creates the tension and the release for us. Scary Movie 2 repeatedly opts for the second type of joke. There is no
tension, no mystery, and absolutely no funny. Likewise, half the time, the
characters are scared and the other half they recognize that their world is one of parody and comedy. Characters in a parody must accept and address their
predicament with life or death seriousness, or it kills the comedy. Consider Leslie Nielsen in the Naked Gun films. To Frank Drebin, everything was
serious. It was how seriously he treated absurd situations that made it funny.
There is also very little effective parody, if any. Movies are not parodied here. They are merely referenced. Just because I recognize variances on scenes
from the Exorcist, Mission Impossible 2, Charlie's Angels, etc. doesn't mean
they're funny. The source material is not mocked, commented on, or made light of in any capacity at all. They are merely replicated with swearing and sex- jokes tacked on.
Finally, the film can't settle on a tone. In one scene (in fact, in many scenes), a character is sprayed or covered in some disgusting substance, only to be clean and rid of it in the next. Fine. Perfect. That's the way these movies work. But in another scene, ridiculous occurrences (such as getting in a fistfight with a
possessed cat who handles a broken bottle) are treated with a seriousness and meaning by the characters involved. One character supposedly has carnal
interactions with a ghost/monster, and the issue is dropped. Another does the same thing, and it becomes a plot point. Either this is a movie that exists as a coherent story or exists as essentially a series of sketches with punch lines, but it can't be both. Actually, that's not true. Films made by brilliant comedians can do both, because they understand the nuances of their craft. The Scary Movies are not made by craftsmen. They are made by fart-joke purveyors. The first film embraced that.
The second film is a little too ambitious, an 82-minute marathon of poor setups and no laughs, all the while wishing it could be a real movie that tells a story. What scares me the most is that Scary Movie 2 is part of a trilogy. May the
movie gods save us all. Rating (1/10)