Scary Movie

Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, Scary Movie follows several friends, including Anna Faris’ Cindy, Shannon Elizabeth’s Buffy , and Jon Abrahams’ Bobby, as they’re stalked by a mysterious figure in a ghost mask. Filmmaker Wayans, armed with a screenplay by Buddy Johnson, Phil Beauman, Jason Friedberg, Aaron Seltzer, Marlon Wayans, and Shawn Wayans, delivers a pervasively (and perpetually) lackluster comedy that contains exceedingly (and distressingly) little in the way of amusing attributes, as the picture, which runs a short-yet-not-nearly-short-enough 88 minutes, stumbles through one ill-conceived, hopelessly unfunny parody sequence after another – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a recurring reliance on grating, wildly over-the-top jokes and performances. (The latter is especially true of Marlon Wayans’ nails-on-a-chalkboard turn as the egregiously one-note Shorty.) And while the movie admittedly boasts a very small handful of agreeable elements, including a fun cameo by James Van Der Beek, Scary Movie does, for the most part, come off as a bottom-of-the-barrel disaster that’s aged horribly in the years since its 2000 debut.

* out of ****