 David Zucker, the force behind the Airplane, Police Squad, and Naked Gun movies, has now taken over the Scary Movie franchise from the Wayans Brothers, infusing it with his joke-a-minute style. That style is the target of most reviewers. Stephen Holden writes in the New York Times: "The barrage of jokes and references flies by so thick and so fast that there's usually no time to react to one gag before two more have passed. Narrative cohesion falls by the wayside as the tonnage accumulates." Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News observes: "The jokes come in endless flurries, and if they're working -- even at a ratio of 1 in 4 -- you're laughing more than you're not." Some critics, however, suggest that the laughs taper off as the movie reaches its climax. Says Teresa Wiltz in the Washington Post: "It's outrageous. It's obnoxious. It's offensive. And yes, it's also really, really, really funny. Or, at least, it is for the first 40 minutes or so, until it starts to wear out its welcome." Quite a few critics, including Roger Ebert who suggests that the genre of movies associated with Zucker is "dead," clearly found little to laugh about in the movie. "The only thing scary about scary Movie 3 is how unfunny it is," grumbles Bruce Westbrook in the Houston Chronicle. But Michael Booth in the Denver Post writes: "Here's hoping the Scary Movie franchise resurrects itself each fall, no matter how rotten the jokes, how malodorous the premise, or how embalmed the B-list stars. |
