Scary Movie 3: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

This is just a stab in the dark, the wildest of guesses on my part, but I don’t think Michael Jackson would recommend “Scary Movie 3.”

The film, which spooked $48 million out of audiences last weekend, has a grand time rekindling those pesky, lingering allegations of Jackson’s alleged pedophilia before it gets down to business and really has its way with the pop star.

In a scene that weds elements of Jackson’s recent tabloid affairs to M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs” and “The Sixth Sense,” a kicking, shrieking Jackson look-alike (Edward Moss) is dangled from a second-story window and asked how he likes it. Then, in the series of events that follows, what’s left of his nose is hacked off for good.

Tough times for the King of Pop, but not so for Pamela Anderson, who has the good sense to poke a little fun at herself in the film’s funny opening scene.

In it, Anderson and Jenny McCarthy, dressed as provocative, busty schoolgirls, are watching television when it occurs to Anderson that television microwaves might actually lead to silicone breast implant destruction. The inspired screaming match that ignites between them reaches a fever pitch, with Anderson’s rapidly ballooning breasts going a long way in proving that theory wrong.

It’s just this mix of silliness and savagery that makes up the heart of “Scary Movie 3,” a film that follows its predecessors in picking over the bones of recent box-office hits— “The Ring,” “The Matrix: Reloaded,” “The Others" and "8 Mile" also among them—with the sort of tongue-in-cheek menace that, when done well, can lead to very funny results.

More often than not, that’s just the case here. The film, which director David Zucker (“Airplane!,” “Naked Gun”) assumed from the Wayans brothers, is a ripe, post-modern parody that’s so eager to please, you can’t keep it down.

It wants to have its cake and gorge on it, too. As such, the jokes are sometimes overwhelmed with excess and bad taste, which tends to stifle the laughs. Still, when they do find their mark, they explode onscreen, serving as a sort of atonement for Zucker’s last film, the awful "My Boss's Daughter.”

The cast—Anna Farris, Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Leslie Nielsen, Camryn Manheim, Queen Latifah, Eddie Griffin, George Carlin and little Drew Mikuska as a creepy telepathic kid reminiscent of Haley Joel Osment, but by way of the devil—are all game, filling out a plot that blends elements of alien infestation, the supernatural, the very real horror of white rap star wannabes, and government cover-ups.

The movie joins the remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in being the only horror flick vying for your Halloween dollar at the cineplex this year. Of the two, it’s the one to see.

Grade: B