Scary Movie 3
Webster's Dictionary defines excellence as the quality of being excellent. (Simpsons joke if no one recognizes it.) Excellence used to be a term that could describe Scary Movie. The first one was a work of genius, a picture that made fun of a picture that made fun of horror movies. By the second one, the trend seriously went the other way with its parody of "The Haunting". To right the ship, they brought in David Zucker to direct, someone who also used to live up to the word excellence with his Airplane! and Naked Gun films. But his latest films of "My Boss' Daughter" and "BASEketball" also show him headed in the wrong direction. With "Scary Movie 3", it's obvious two wrongs don't make a right.

Two years was just enough time to collect enough material for this third movie. The main film to make fun of was "The Ring" with a little bit of "The Matrix", "8 Mile" and "Signs" among others on the side. Our favorite woman in distress Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) is now a news reporter, interested by the story of a crop circle just 20 miles away at a cornfield, owned by Tom (Charlie Sheen), the former priest. His brother, George (Simon Rex), the aspiring white rapper, falls for Cindy when they meet picking up their niece and nephew, respectively, at the school where Cindy's friend, Brenda (Regina Hall from the previous installments), teaches. Soon, Cindy's nephew begins drawing weird pictures and reading secret thoughts while aliens begin landing. And all the while, a videotape floats around where the people who watch it die in 7 days. Oh, what will they do?!?

Laugh all the way home with money in their pockets, that's what. It's a marked improvement over the last installment but still isn't worthy of the first one. Its best moments are given away in the trailer while its other pieces of original hilarity get beaten into the ground with repetition. Haha, he gets hit in the crotch! Let's do it again! So inspired it isn't. You could tell as much from the performances its actors put forth. Most of it looked pretty forced with the exception of Leslie Nielsen and Ja Rule, who looked like they were having fun beating up on handicapped people. The 8 Mile and Matrix skits were downright awkward while having a priest babysit a boy was just wrong. With word that Scary Movie 4 is in pre-production, they should take more than 2 years to make it. 1.5 stars