Directed by David Zucker
Written by Craig Mazin and Pat Proft, based on characters created by Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedburg, and Aaron Seltzer
Release Date: 24 October 2003
Running Time: 84 minutes
Editor’s Rating: 2 out of 4 Leslie Nielsens listening to Tupac


You read the description right, boys and girls, welcome back to Giggleween, the series so scary you just might pee your pants with laughter. Well, something like that. I don’t get how scary movies work. Anyway, today’s film kind of represents a crucial point in the very hit-and-miss Scary Movie series. It’s the midpoint, the very moment when things started going downhill, which makes it interesting to study.

Heretofore, previous Scary Movies had been following one central narrative intent on parodying one primary well-known scary movie and then went after others if it fit the story, with the first following the narrative of I Know What You Did Last Summer (more or less) and the second following the narrative of The Haunting (more or less). With this one, we’re following anywhere from two to three different narratives from The Ring, Signs, and for no real good reason, the famous scary movie 8 Mile. Spooooooooky.

Therein lies the problem. Scary Movie 3 tries to do so much and as a result doesn’t do anything well at all. The funniest parts of the film come from cheap physical comedy, and not from the actual jokes they’re making as parody. But honestly, who doesn’t giggle when they see Charlie Sheen get smashed in the jumblies? Still, even when the parodic comedy does work, it’s when the film uses the only two characters that SM3 took from the first two flicks--Brenda’s fight with the girl from The Ring stands out as the best example. The new things added into the script from the new change in crew mostly fall flat, even though they’re trying really hard to make it work.

Therein lies another problem, really - the film tries so hard to make fun of stuff that they move away from the things that makes parody funny, like satire and diversion, and toward the things that make parody insufferable, like stating the obvious and name recognition. The previous two films didn’t (for the most part) need to rely on big names to sell the movies they were making. They did their funny junk, and then moved along to the next piece of funny junk. Scary Movie 3 has Charlie Sheen in it, you guys! And Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy in the first ten minutes! And it has a Michael Jackson impersonator! How topical! How relevant!

Except it’s 2015 and with the exception of Michael Jackson, no one cares anymore. The reason the first two worked (and are still funny today, mind you) is that it still told a story, an inherently funny, nonsensical one, but a story, and then used that story to make fun of other funny things. Scary Movie 3 sacrifices that story to put a well-known thing on display and the very abruptly telling the audience “LAUGH AT THIS! THIS IS FUNNY!” And if you’re a tough-talking rise-against-the-system-type like myself, I’m not going to laugh at something someone tells me to laugh at. I laugh when I want to, dangit. And unfortunately, things only got worse from there.

**I watched this film on Netflix. I was not compensated for this review.**