There are two films that are typically looked at as the perfection of the “Parody Film”. 1974’s Young Frankenstein and 1980’s Airplane. Mel Brooks had always been a satirist in his comedy. The Producers and Blazing Saddles are praised as some of the finest comedies ever made and while they both have elements of parody in them Young Frankenstein is where he made a direct parody to some pre-existing source material (Universal’s Frankenstein films).
The direct parody became what Brooks was known for (with High Anxiety, Spaceballs and various other films). Meanwhile Airplane! presented absurdist over the top and crazy comedy. In ways never before seen. Absurdist comedies continued to be part of the Zuckers and Abraham filmography but rarely did they come close the quality of Airplane!
This brings us to the dark days of Parodies. They started with Scary Movie. From we started getting films like Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and various other pieces of garbage. Trapped in the middle was Scary Movie 3.
I’m not going to say Scary Movie 3 is a perfect film. It’s not, it’s not a great comedy, it’s not even a great parody, I can admit that. What Scary Movie 3 is though is a huge improvement on the previous films. The Wayans brothers are gone and replaced with David Zucker. Unlike the films that would later come out the film does the simple task of focusing on a plot… sorta.
The parody combines plot elements of The Ring and Signs to tell a really alien/ghost story. Sure there’s also elements of Sixth Sense, 8 Mile and The Matrix scattered throughout but they genuinely try to stick with those two main movies. I appreciate that since this was the time that movies like Disaster Movie were coming out basing the script on movie trailers instead of watching the films they were parodying.
The film definitely has things at are terrible. The opening credits sequence with Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Anderson, awful and dated parodies of commercials that I forget existed until I re-watched this movie and plenty of moments that feel like they would be better suited in Scary Movie 1 or 2. This film is more light-hearted and feels like a Zucker film (absurd, sex jokes, Leslie Nelson), those are the elements that keep the film entertaining.
Here’s what works in the film: Simon Rex and Charlie Sheen are casted well. Sheen has proven his comedy chops in Hot Shots and if you’re a fan of those films you’ll find just as much to enjoy in his performance here. Simon Rex meanwhile, has done the Horror Parody genre previously with ‘Shriek if You Know What I did Last Friday the 13th‘. The biggest laughs however come from comedy veteran Leslie Nelson and (at the time) new comers Anthony Anderson and Kevin Hart.
Zucker’s eye for a good sex joke or quality sight gag are still there. The parody of the actual Ring video is packed with humorous sight gags. The film also contained rewrites by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (the men behind Harold And Kumar). This film could be better obviously… but it could have been much much worse.
Writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Epic Movie) wanted to parody Star Wars, Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings (yet still call it Scary movie 3). What I’m trying to say I guess is Fuck Friedberg/Seltzer.
Scary Movie 3 won’t ever be better than the classic parody and spoof films of the 70’s and 80’s but it’s still a massive improvement on the other parody films that we’ve been exposed too since the Wayans brothers gave us Scary Movie in 2000.