Jolt Country

Two years later the franchise returned, this time with some big changes. To quote Brenda, "I feel like something bad is coming, like when you see an Asian woman behind the wheel of a car." After two films, the Wayans brothers (all three) decided to leave the franchise, leaving veteran parody master David Zucker to take over as director. Cindy (Anna Farris) and Brenda (Regina Hall) are the only two returning characters, but the new cast members include Simon Rex, Charlie Sheen, Jeremy Piven, Kevin Hart, Anthony Anderson, Darrell Hammond, and multiple other cameos.

Scary Movie 3 opens with yet another disconnected parody -- this one from The Ring -- featuring Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy. It involves a rough pillow fight, some funny one liners, and a discussion of "that tape." "Oh," says Jenny McCarthy, "the one with that girl and Tommy Lee on a boat and--" "No, not THAT tape," says Pamela Anderson.

Scary Movie 3 feels different than the previous two films. While it's still a parody/mashup of multiple films -- The Ring, Signs, and 8-Mile -- this one feels more plot driven. Like Airplane and all the other Zucker brothers films, this feels like a funny movie. Cindy's nephew is the kid from the Ring, while George, his brother Tom (Charlie Sheen), and George's daughter are living in the movie Signs. This time around, Cindy is a news anchor and Brenda runs a daycare.

Less characters to track means more time for plot and jokes, and it makes for a better film but a different one. The humor is inconsistent -- there are long jokes, short jokes, parodies, deep cuts... something for everyone, but not everything for everyone. Then there are moments where everything comes together, like Brenda's wake, which almost made me pee my pants when i saw it in the theater.



The 8 Mile stuff gets wrapped up early on, but as things move forward the film is forced to wrap up two plots -- Cindy's son, who watched the tape from the Ring, and the alien invasion from Signs. That would be difficult for most actors, which is why Zucker brings in the heavy hitter and king of parodies, Leslie Nielson, as the president. Once the aliens begin appearing, Nielson has a presidential press conference in a style only he could pull off -- it's Airplane to the core -- and things go wrong quickly. "Jerry's Kids my ass!"



Scary Movie 3 has fewer dated references, save for multiple parodies from the second Matrix movie. Queen Latifah and Eddie Griffin make appearances as the Oracle and Orpheus, and later in the film George Carlin appears as the Architect. We also get impersonators appearing as Michael Jackson and Tammy Fay Baker. Despite it's silliness, the parody of Signs toward the end is pretty good. Not only does it poke fun at the original film, but the ending makes as much (if not more) sense than Signs itself. And, somehow, the film manages to intertwine the Ring and Signs and make it work.

The biggest shift here is one in tone. Gone are the penises, blowjobs, and gallons of semen. The closest we come to a sex joke is Pamela Anderson making a reference to her shaved pussy moments before reaching down and lifting up a hairless cat. Instead here we get dogs humping one another, long fart jokes, and aliens peeing through the ends of their index fingers. The result is a PG-13 rating that makes much more sense and is the ultimate audience for these movies. (Unrated versions of the film, labelled Scary Movie 3.5, were released on DVD). Scary Movie 3 isn't the best movie in the series, but a few shining moments make it work sitting through.

The Michael Jackson joke in the trailer made me laugh out loud this cool autumn morning. I feel awful for doing so! The sign of a great comedy. I don't think he was a pedophile, at least if he was I haven't encountered any smoking gun proof. He was weird, but he had a rabid gorilla on his property as well if I am not mistaken.

Parody is a weird thing. I am kind of convinced that all the effort involved in parody could be tweaked a tiny bit and then the creators have their own thing they can be totally proud of. I like the idea of three movies getting parodied, but a script writer cared enough to make them all work. Based on your review and the trailer and the fact that Jenny McCarthy is a very guilty pleasure, I would watch this movie. Thank you for writing about it!

One of the problem with these films, and Zucker/Abrahams in general, is that when something works they recycle it. In the fourth movie during the War of the Worlds sequence, a group of young boys are lost and the same Michael Jackson impersonator appears and attempts to lure them back to his Neverland Ranch. When a girl appears he asks her if she has a brother. He is eventually zapped by aliens, leaving only his prosthetic nose. It's beat for beat the same joke.

My kids once questioned how I could listen to Michael Jackson after knowing what he was accused of and I was forced to tell them in third grade I wanted to BE Michael Jackson -- not just me, but all of us. My mom had a pair of white oven gloves, one of which I would wear while attempting to moonwalk on our kitchen's tile floor. One kid in our class even got the red leather jacket and we were all envious. I vowed to name my first born Billy Jean. It was a different time.