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'Scary Movie 3' isn't a scream
Leslie Nielsen plays the president in 'Scary Movie 3'
Marni Grossman/ Miramax Films
Director: David Zucker
Stars: Charlie Sheen, Anna Faris, Simon Rex
MPAA rating: PG-13 for pervasive crude and sexual humor, language, comic violence and drug references
The third installment of the "Scary Movie" franchise once again spoofs genre flicks -- this time "Signs," "The Ring" and "The Matrix" -- and throws in bits of "8 Mile."
And although there are a few laugh-out-loud funny moments -- maybe more, depending on your tolerance for repeated violent slapstick, vomit, corpse abuse, and body part and fluid jokes -- it's not the kind of smart parody that makes this sort of comedy work on its highest level. Some of the scenes and lines designed to garner laughs went by without as much as a giggle from the audience.
Most of the plot is a blending and twisting of the story lines from "Signs," with Charlie Sheen playing the Mel Gibson role of the farmer who discovers crop circles and aliens around his homestead, and "The Ring," with Anna Faris as Cindy, the reporter investigating a videotape whose viewers die after seven days. Some sight gags work well, and a few lines inspire genuine laughter. The mere on-screen arrival of Leslie Nielsen as the president of the United States and George Carlin as The Architect got a laugh from the handful of oldsters in the audience, but nothing they did on-screen beyond showing up did anything to help the movie along.
It's a movie that's neither as good nor as bad is it could have been, and judging from the wildly mixed comments of audience members filtering out of the theater, it's not necessarily a sure thing for director David Zucker, who helmed this project instead of its originators, the Wayans brothers.
