7.10.00
Scary Movie

7.05.00
Chicken Run

7.03.00
The Perfect Storm

6.19.00
Me, Myself & Irene

6.19.00
The Patriot

6.19.00
Shaft

6.19.00
Titan A.E.

6.09.00
Gone in Sixty Seconds

6.09.00
Grass

6.06.00
Road Trip

6.02.00
Small Time Crooks

6.02.00
Mission: Impossible 2

6.02.00
Dinosaur

7/10/00 10:50 a.m.
Box-Office Gross
If you are easily offended, Scary Movie is not the film for you.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

he epic historical spectacle of Gladiator? The epic man vs. nature story of The Perfect Storm? The epic family and freedom saga of The Patriot? You've gotta be kidding.

Expect none of that in Scary Movie. Also, don't expect anything approaching subtlety or nuance. Instead, in this over-the-top and below-the-belt comedy, expect a very crude, yet very funny, parody-pastiche. Fans of the late-lamented early-'90s comedy show, In Living Color, will recognize much of the humor here as the movie was directed by series creator Keenen Ivory Wayans and written by and starring his younger brothers Marlon and Shawn. Scary Movie also features a few veterans from the show.

The basic framing plot is a send-up of the teen-slasher films such as Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, with winks to their TV kin like Dawson's Creek (a character from that show, as well as its execrable theme song, have cameos). Like the Naked Gun series, of course, this film is not satisfied to spoof just one genre. Thus, it includes send-ups of The Matrix, The Usual Suspects, The Blair Witch Project (a particularly nauseating scene), and even Naked Gun's corpse-outline gag. As for the acting, in addition to the Wayans brothers, Saturday Night Live's Cheri Oteri is hilarious as Courtney Cox knock-off Gale Hailstorm (author of the best-seller, You're Dead, I'm Rich).

If you are easily offended, Scary Movie is not the film for you. It features gross-out humor with a capital "G" that earns the movie an "R" rating, which should probably be an "NC-17." Got that? Sex, drugs, bodily fluids — you name it, it's here. In one sense, the movie is refreshing in that there are no sacred cows here. Every possible target gets skewered — blacks, whites, gays, PETA. It also breaks what may be the last taboo in mainstream American movies — male genitalia have a tendency to pop up (ahem!) on more than one occasion.

While the movie is funny at the basest possible level, a colleague raised the key question as we departed the theater: How far can movies go now to shock and gross-out audiences? Many thought that the nadir was reached with There's Something About Mary's zipper and stiff-hair scenes. Then came American Pie's gee-what's-in-the-beer scene. And now, Scary Movie. American movie humor seems caught up in a bizarre limbo contest of "how low can you go?"

Time will eventually tell, but bet that we won't like the answer.

There is one subtle irony about Scary Movie, but it's not in the script. A joke making the rounds of late points out how unjust it was that the biggest star to break out of the predominantly black In Living Color was the very white Jim Carrey. Well, in its first weekend Scary Movie blew away Carrey's new movie, Me, Myself & Irene. Looks like the Wayans family may yet have the last laugh.

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