Main cast: Anna Faris (Cindy Campbell), Marlon Wayans (Shorty Meeks), James DeBello (Tommy), Shawn Wayans (Ray Wilkins), David Cross (Dwight Hartman), Regina Hall (Brenda Meeks), Chris Masterson (Buddy), Tim Curry (Professor Oldman), Kathleen Robertson (Theo), James Woods (Father McFeely), Chris Elliott (Hanson), and Tori Spelling (Alex Monday)
Director: Keenan Ivory Wayans
While I enjoyed the original Scary Movie for its novelty value, Scary Movie 2 is a really unfunny excuse for the Wayan brothers to vent out their frustrations at the opposite sex in this movie.
Cindy Campbell is now in college, Scream 2-style, and this time around the nefarious Professor Oldman decides to ask Cindy and her friends Shorty, Ray, and Brenda, along with potential new boyfriend Buddy and new friend Alex to a haunted mansion, The Haunting-style. Nonsensical hijinks ensue.
Most of the jokes here are crude and scatological beyond belief. An early parody of The Exorcist has the priest, played by James Wood, solving the problem in a brilliantly simple way, but the tasteless puke match that happens before robs this scene of any humorous value.
One thing that stand out in this movie is how much it humiliates the women in this movie. Anna Faris still gets blasted by semen in this movie, but her character is also physically battered and humiliated in so many ways that it is hard to keep count. Likewise, Tori Spelling’s Alex Monday is humiliated and beaten up, her abuse quota second only to Cindy’s. At the same time, the male characters get off on humiliating the women and generally escaping most of the physical abuse passed off as slapstick fun the women get into, so Scary Movie 2 is really on shaky grounds here. If the Wayan brothers are angry because they can’t get laid or they get dumped one too many times, may I suggest they talk to their shrink or get a drug habit instead of subjecting me to mean-spirited misogynist nonsense passed off as comedy?
There are very few good moments here, most coming from the underused Regina Hall, whose Brenda is the only character that is sassy and likable. Anna Faris plays Cindy with commendable aplomb, but she’s nothing more than a punching bag here. Chris Elliot plays Hanson the one-handed butler very well, but he is more often gross than amusing, especially when he sounds eerily like Michael Jackson when he speaks.
Scary Movie 2 is a painfully unfunny movie that will amuse only those that find extreme scat jokes funny. There is no parody value in this movie as much as it is a parody of the parody genre. Or something. Either way, if you must watch this movie for some reason, go download it off the Internet or con someone to pay for the rental fee. Money is too precious to waste on excruciatingly bad movies.
