Scary Movie 3
In 2000, ''Scary Movie'' gave the movies something they'd never seen before: a black perspective on megaplex culture. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans and partially written by and starring his brothers Marlon and Shawn, the movie and its not-as-hysterical 2001 sequel made a wicked, astute, and profane mockery of the ''Scream'' films, randy teensploitation, and crass moviegoing behavior.
By installment two, it was clear the brothers just wanted to act a fool, and the tightly laced satire that made its predecessor seem so minty fresh rapidly contracted halitosis after the opening scene. It had nowhere to go.
''Scary Movie 3'' is notably Wayansless. It's also notably devoid of a point of view. Assembled by an armada of comedy writers but credited to two, the film grafts the head of ''The Ring'' onto the body of ''Signs,'' stuffing it with all manner of impertinent gags that seem to be from a popular-culture organ donor. It's Frankenstein's mangy, ultimately tiresome movie monster.
As was true with ''Scary Movie 2,'' this third edition's opening scene leaps out of the gates: Pamela Anderson and Jenny McCarthy gamely pretend to be the two high school girls who watch the fatal videotape at the beginning of ''The Ring.'' They wear pleated prep-school skirts and play dumber than usual, breaking into a mock catfight that culminates with Anderson treating McCarthy to a wedgie. For the world's lad magazine readers, this is a dream come true. For the rest of us, it's just stupid fun.
From there, ''Scary Movie 3'' seems as if it's headed toward the exuberance of the first movie. We move out to a farm outside D.C., where Charlie Sheen is a former priest who's got crop circles in his cornfield. In some way, they're connected to the videotape, and it's up to the series' unflappable heroine Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) to get to the bottom of it. Campbell is a blonde now and a news anchor to boot, in much the dubious way Naomi Watts was a reporter in ''The Ring.''
Faris, who romped through the previous ''Scary'' movies, is a fascinating comedy actor. She masochistically dares the movie to try and embarrass her, only to emerge unscathed from every crude gag. The priceless Regina Hall, playing the foulmouthed teacher of Cindy's psychic nephew, also returns for a third helping, poking more holes in horror conventions.
Still, the movie seems to miss the point of her character completely. In the first two movies, Hall's blackness kept her from being killed in a genre in which the black character is always the first to die. Here she turns up dead. And the funeral erupts into a regrettable, pointless melee that demonstrates what happens to a spoof when it has nothing to lampoon.
The director is Jerry Zucker, the mock-aholic behind the ''Airplane'' and ''Naked Gun'' movies that inspired this series to begin with. He brings a certain gangbusters energy to the proceedings that was painfully absent from his last film, ''My Boss's Daughter.'' For ''Scary Movie 3,'' Zucker oversees a Catholic priest joke, a ''West Wing'' interlude, the Coors Light twins, several ''Matrix'' riffs (one starring Queen Latifah, another George Carlin) and an arbitrary rap-world shoot-out that takes down Macy Gray and most of the Wu-Tang Clan.
Yet Zucker can't tweak the tedium in the movies he's roughing up without his own movie growing tedious. The last 15 minutes of this movie feel as sleepy and uninspired as the last 30 of any recent episode of ''Saturday Night Live.'' But the movie has given up long before that. Once Sheen's hip-hop wannabe brother (Simon Rex) heads to an all-black D.C. club for a spotty ''8 Mile'' detour, it's clear the movie is never coming back.
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