July 4, 2001

By Veronica Mixon

The surprise hit of last year's Scary Movie guaranteed that the Wayans Brothers - Keenen, Marlon and Shawn - would return with a sequel. Greed is the only reason SCARY MOVIE 2 exists and because Miramax rushed the Wayans back into production, this sequel is far worst than the original! Gone is the appealing notion of further spoofing the teen slasher flicks that had dazzled audiences during the last decade. Instead, SCARY MOVIE 2 is a long series of skits utilizing the craziest moments from recent movies like Hannibal, The House on Haunted Hill, Dude, Where's My Car and Charlie's Angels.

The film opens with the send up classic scene of The Exorcist when an unconventional priest - i.e., horny - played by James Wood confronts a girl (Natasha Lyonne) possessed by a demon. After a tongue-wagging contest, the priests and the girl proceed to puke on each other. Adolescent boys will probably find this funny but there isn't one real laugh in the skit. Next the story returns to the heroine, Cindy Campbell (Ann Faris) attending college with a group of friends: hothead Shorty (Marlon Wayans), Buddy (Chris Masterson), sexually confused Ray (Shawn Wayans), screaming Brenda (Regina Hall) and Alex ( Tori Spelling). They are chosen by The Professor (Tim Curry) to spend the night in a haunted house and unearth a grizzly ghost (Richard Moll). During their journey, they're assisted by the overcompensating wheelchair bound, Dwight (David Cross) and fend off creepy butler (Chris Elliot).

The Wayans Brothers humor is based in snappy vulgarity and doing the dozens on everybody including your mama! PC does not exist in their world. Dwight break dances in his wheel chair and tries to rescue someone by crawling up stairs - in a hurry! One coed is seduced by the invisible man, a door knocker consists of male genitalia and the Wayans make lewd cracks about a stained blue dress, Florida voting ballots, Firestone tires, the popular kids book, Harry Potter and "Whitney and Bobby's smoking." Influenced by the Farrelly Brothers, the Wayans fail to develop real-life human situations to poke fun but instead copy startling moments like Hannibal dining on brains and ghostly images from What Lies Beneath and Poltergeist.