Scary Movie 2 Reviews

It wasn't a classic or particularly well made, but at least Scary Movie was good for a few honest Scream-inspired laughs. That original outing looks like a masterpiece in comparison to this uninspired profit-driven sequel. Barely competent on any technical or artistic level, what comic ingenuity and genre appreciation was shown the first time around has been replaced by boorish vulgarity and a desperation to get the audience to snigger at anything, no matter how lame, crude or obvious. Once past the opening where The Exorcist is amusingly sent up by James Woods in a cameo appearance as a priest (a role originally earmarked for Marlon Brando), it descends rapidly into lampooning the recent remake of The Haunting — so close to an awful self parody itself that any gags at its expense are depressingly redundant. Everything from Charlie's Angels and What Lies Beneath to Hannibal and even The Weakest Link are raked over for minimal laughs in a shoddy satire it took seven screenwriters to produce. It brings new depths to the term “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

"...SCARY MOVIE 2 does have the cutthroat cool that links it and the original to hip-hop, and the take-no-prisoners crush of energy and cruelty toward the targets of its spoofs..."

A movie with more writers than jokes, which, apart from an Exorcist spoof, are recycled from the first feeble effort; this is even feebler, if that were possible.

It wasn't a classic or particularly well made, but at least Scary Movie was good for a few honest Scream-inspired laughs. That original outing looks like a masterpiece in comparison to this uninspired profit-driven sequel. Barely competent on any technical or artistic level, what comic ingenuity and genre appreciation was shown the first time around has been replaced by boorish vulgarity and a desperation to get the audience to snigger at anything, no matter how lame, crude or obvious. Once past the opening where The Exorcist is amusingly sent up by James Woods in a cameo appearance as a priest (a role originally earmarked for Marlon Brando), it descends rapidly into lampooning the recent remake of The Haunting — so close to an awful self parody itself that any gags at its expense are depressingly redundant. Everything from Charlie's Angels and What Lies Beneath to Hannibal and even The Weakest Link are raked over for minimal laughs in a shoddy satire it took seven screenwriters to produce. It brings new depths to the term “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

"...SCARY MOVIE 2 does have the cutthroat cool that links it and the original to hip-hop, and the take-no-prisoners crush of energy and cruelty toward the targets of its spoofs..."

A movie with more writers than jokes, which, apart from an Exorcist spoof, are recycled from the first feeble effort; this is even feebler, if that were possible.

When, after the unexpected success of the first Scary Movie, Miramax immediately demanded a sequel, director Wayans and... read more on Time Out

"There's a pretty funny parody of CHARLIE'S ANGELS tucked inside SCARY MOVIE 2..."