REVIEW: SCARY MOVIE 5 Idiotic and juvenile ... just like we like our scary movie spoofs! I can’t help but laugh at a lot of spoof movies. They are great for cheap laughs and a good way to relieve stress. Movies like Airplane!, The Naked Gun and Spaceballs have been played so many times at my house that if you look close enough to the TV screen, you may some images permanently imprinted on the screen. That being said, movies like Epic Movie or Disaster Movie wouldn’t fit the mold. Some spoof movies can actually raise the ol’ blood pressure more than relieve them, so be careful which ones you watch. Scary Movie 5 follows the same mold as the previous four Scary Movies, and has plenty of cheap laughs to spread around. Is it a great movie? No. Is it one of the funniest movies of the year? Not hardly. But for less than an hour and a half, it has enough laughs to relieve some stress. Parodying movies such as Paranormal Activity, Dark Skies, Mama and Evil Dead, Scary Movie 5 has some hilarious moments scattered throughout. Some jokes hit flat as board, while others will have you holding your side. If you’re a fan of the previous Scary Movies, then you’ll like this one as well. I loved the first two, really liked the third movie and haven’t managed to sit through all of the fourth one, but I still may try eventually. Scary Movie 5 is more on par with the latter two than the first two. Speaking of the first Scary Movies, Marlon Wayans said in an interview that the studio wanted the Wayans brothers to return for this entry, but they declined the offer. Marlon Wayans then made and released his own scary movie spoof, A Haunted House, which did significantly better at the box office then Scary Movie 5. Whatever his motive was for doing his own movie instead of rejoining the Scary Movie cast (which he and Shawn both still get credit for creating the characters in the end credits) is unknown, but it ended up working out well for him after all. Even without series regulars Anna Faris and Regina Hall, the cast is pretty solid. Charlie Sheen and Simon Rex return from the third one and provide a few solid laughs, while newcomers like Ashley Tisdale and Molly Shannon bring their own qualities to the film. Lindsay Lohan, Snoop Dogg, Darrell Hammond, Terry Crews, Katt Williams and Heather Locklear also liven up the cast, even they only make brief appearances. Oddly enough, the filmmakers decided to spoof a movie that hasn’t even been made yet! Jerry O’Connell appears in what is a spoof of the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey movie scheduled for release in August 2014. They haven’t even begun filming the movie yet, but for whatever reason, the filmmakers decided to spoof it anyway. It seems to me that if you don’t have enough actual films to spoof, and that you resort to something that will eventually be a box-office hit, it’s just scraping the bottom of the barrel at this point. Even though I’m a fan of the Scary Movie franchise, I do hope that this will be the last one. It’s had its fun in the sun, but now it’s time to be put out to pasture. Scary Movie 5 has solid really funny moments, and plenty of shake-your-head-at-the-stupidity moments as well. If you like the series already, you’ll probably like this one too. If you don’t like the series, then just stay away from it. Scary Movie 5 (R) .............................................. C
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 19:15:05 +0000