Peter
Travers of Rolling Stone
Hey Whore, how's
the whoring? According to this week's Quote Whore:
About The Patriot:
"A Thunderous spectacle! Packs a Wallop!"
About Shaft
"Right On! Brotherman in Charge!"
About Gladiator
"Glorious! A Colossus of rousing action and ferocious fun!"
Me, Myself and
Irene is "A
hell-raising piece of comedy heaven!"
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©2000 by
Randy Shandis Enterprises. All rights fucking reserved.
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This week:
Scary Movie
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Filthy says:
"All the pant-shitting here is on screen!" |
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My nephew is seven and he wants to be a stand up comedian
when he grows up. He's been working on his material and he's
written one joke that's a killer. He says, "Butt, weiner."
Last time I saw Ryan tell that joke his five-year-old brother
fell out of his chair from laughing so hard.
Ryan is not credited as one of the writers of "Scary
Movie," but it's obviously his material. It's all about
butt, wiener, butt, wiener, and then a new bit, "Fart."
The plot is an unsophisticated blending of "Scream"
and "I Know What You Did Last Summer." A group of high
school kids accidentally kill a man and make a pact to keep it
a secret. But someone knows and is killing them the high schoolers
off. Along the way, the movie spoofs about thirty other flicks.
The two things the movie has going for it are a few laughs,
mostly at the beginning, and its pacing. I mean, holy shit, this
movie must have 200 scenes in its 82 minutes. When the jokes
suck big hard donkey balls, which is often, it's easy to forget
because the movie has moved on already, to another joke that
sucks big hard donkey balls.
There is no character development or plot that makes sense.
The argument, I'm sure, is that it's a balls-out parody and plot
and character can be sacrificed. I say horseshit. "Scary
Movie" is the longest 82 minute movie I ever sat through
because the characters are flatter than Sandra Bullock's tits.
Every character is a single gag that gets run into the ground,
making the second half of the movie hard to sit through. Any
movie should start with good characters an audience wants to
spend time with, then go ahead and make them fart and shit their
pants. Jokes, no matter how good, are not enough to keep a story
alive. The Wayans tell a story, and no matter how lame it is,
they are obligated to tell the end. That means wrapping up loose
ends and resolving the problems it sets up. "Scary Movie,"
even though it's a parody, doesn't do enough to make us give
a flying fuck how it ends. In fact, you can walk out at any moment
of the movie and know just as much.
The Wayans do makes fart and poop jokes in spades and it makes
me wonder who the fuck in Hollywood read the script and said
"Fart jokes! How clever! Double the budget and full steam
ahead!" There are three "hot chick farting" jokes,
and numerous references to shitting pants and sticking fingers
up asses. Then there are the gallons of spooge, the death by
cock, and the numerous jokes that suggest the Wayans Brothers
are virgins. Good God, even after my first awkward fucking at
the hands of an overweight cashier at Wendy's, I stopped making
these kinds of jokes because I finally understood how sex worked.
In fact, the only character that is consistently funny is
Marlon Wayans as an always-high wannabe playah who shares his
pot with the masked killer. (A side note to respond to all the
people who ask if I am a playah or a playah-hater. I am neither,
I am a playah sympthizah.) The rest of the cast is competent,
but they look like they're being run through boot camp, or an
even-worse-than-normal episode of "Saturday Night Live."
The Wayans Brothers have their hearts in the right place.
They really do want us to laugh, but them making this movie is
like having a dentist perform open-heart surgery. The hit to
miss ratio for gags is as low as the hit to miss ratio for men
at the urinal after midnight at the Arvada Tavern. And the misses
thud like a wet sack of kittens pulled out of Ralston Creek.
Beyond the fart jokes, there is a gag with a pair of hanging
balls that made me think "This is funny why?" And the
retarded deputy character is a horrible waste of an opportunity
to mock the mentally disabled. I say, if you're going to put
in a retarded guy for comic effect, make the joke more than that
he's retarded. Have him set fire to his hair, or cut off a man's
hand. Have him hump a fire hydrant, but don't just shout "Look,
he's retarded!" because doing that got me into a lot of
trouble at the zoo.
It's two fingers in a sea of two finger films. I recommend
"Scary Movie" over any other two finger movie out there
right now, though, because the Wayans, no matter how incapable,
are trying to please us. The rest of those assholes are just
trying to fuck us over for money.
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