SCARY MOVIE 3 — * 1/2 — Anna Faris, Simon Rex, Charlie Sheen, Regina King, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen; rated PG-13 (vulgarity, slapstick violence, profanity, brief drugs, brief sex, racial epithets, brief partial nudity); see "Playing at local movie theaters" for theater listings.
For each silly gag or joke that works in "Scary Movie 3," there are at least 10 more that don't. In fact, some are either so dull or painfully unfunny that you may wonder why you laughed at all.
Don't let the sheer number of gags here fool you into thinking the film is working hard for laughs. It's actually one of the laziest comedies in recent memory. The filmmakers apparently think parodies are funny simply because they're parodies.
Such smugness is off-putting enough, but since this extremely crude film managed to skate by with a PG-13 rating, it may cause the audience to dislike it even more (as well as the MPAA, which granted the rating).
At least the parodies are a little more timely in this sequel than in previous "Scary Movies" — including spoofs of "The Ring," "Signs," "The Others," "8 Mile" and even the "Matrix" movies.
"Scary Movie 3" finds our heroine, Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), now working as a television news reporter whose life is threatened after she comes into possession of a mysterious videotape. After watching the tape, Cindy receives a phone call telling her she's going to die in seven days.
That's enough to worry about, but Cindy is also investigating mysterious crop circles that have appeared in cornfields owned by a local man, Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen).
Are the two things connected? Who cares?
The film pads out the story with a lengthy subplot about Cindy's romance with Tom's wannabe-rapper brother (Simon Rex). And there are cameos galore, none very funny (save for, perhaps, the initial "Ring" parody at the beginning, which features Jenny McCarthy and Pamela Lee).
The hit-to-miss ratio on the jokes is simply too low to forgive a film as slight as this. And director David Zucker's best days are clearly behind him. (Although this film might make you want to see some of his better efforts, such as the 1980 classic "Airplane!" which he co-directed with his brother Jerry and Jim Abrhams.)
"Scary Movie 3" is rated PG-13 for crude humor and sight gags about (and references to) sexual and other bodily functions, slapstick violence (gunplay, brawling and groin shots), occasional use of strong profanity (including one usage of the so-called "R-rated" curse word), brief drug content (opium and marijuana), brief sexual content, use of racial epithets, and brief partial male nudity. Running time: 85 minutes.
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