Movie Review
Got a shovel? Time to bury the 'Scary Movie' franchise

By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic

	ROB MCEWAN Anthony Anderson, Simon Rex and Charlie Sheen in "Scary Movie 3."
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So much for the bus metaphor; now let's get down to the questions everyone really wants answered. Is "Scary Movie 3" as funny as its preview ads? Nope, not remotely. Is "Scary Movie 3" as raunchy as the two previous films in the franchise? Nope, the bodily fluids volume is significantly reduced (by, oh, an ocean or so).

Movie review *½ "Scary Movie 3," with Anna Faris, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Simon Rex, Regina Hall, Charlie Sheen. Directed by David Zucker, from a screenplay by Craig Mazin and Pat Proft. 84 minutes. Rated PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual humor, language, comic violence and drug references. Several theaters.

Is Oscar nominee Queen Latifah really in this movie? Yes, for about three minutes and one interminable flatulence joke, during which I badly wanted to close my eyes and think of "Chicago." And why does Pamela Anderson, who turns up briefly as a schoolgirl, have three heads? Please, I only get a few paragraphs here; let us not get sidetracked.

"Scary Movie 3," at one point, looked promising. The funny but wildly inconsistent Wayans brothers, who created the franchise and made the first two movies, have moved on, and director David Zucker, master of goofball comedy in the '80s and '90s ("Airplane!," "The Naked Gun"), is now in charge. With him came snowy-haired Leslie Nielsen, best known as the gloriously clueless Lt. Frank Drebin in the "Naked Gun" movies. And the movie's targets — "The Ring," "Signs," "8 Mile," "The Matrix Reloaded" — bubble with spoof potential.

But "Scary Movie 3" seems to have missed a few buses on its way to the screen; it's last year's satire, wearing this year's clothes. Since it shows no indication of being made with care — there's a slipshod quality to it, as if half the movie's being improvised — why wasn't it in theaters sooner, while the movies it targets were still fresh in our minds? "Signs," in particular, feels like yesterday's news; Zucker and screenwriters Craig Mazin and Pat Proft have some fun with the aliens (one strolls casually through a field of cows busily digesting), but you have to wrack your brain to remember why it's funny.

And while this particular brand of comedy is by nature hit-and-miss, some of the zingers miss by a mile (in particular, a creepy bit involving a pedophile priest). Zucker seems to have lost the zippy pace he brought to his previous movies; some of the scenes, particularly a melee at a funeral, drag on as if someone forgot to turn the camera off.

There is fun to be had in "Scary Movie 3," to be sure — Seattle native Anna Faris makes a gamely shrieking ingenue (she's got a likably earnest, I'll-try-anything quality), and Charlie Sheen has a knack for deadpan humor. (In one scene, he wakes up, sits up in bed and whomps his head on a lamp — simple, and yet hilarious.) And the trademark Zucker & Co. sight gag, though shown to far better effect in his earlier movies, occasionally peeks through.

"The dogs are acting strange," says Sheen, looking warily around the farm. Sure enough — one of them is wearing a helmet and pulling a Roman chariot; others are wearing berets and gathered around a bong. "Scary Movie 3" throws plenty at its walls; too bad most of it didn't stick.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

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