It's been more than 25 years since Scary Movie showed up to lampoon horror movie tropes.
Since then, it's been sequelized, passed from creator to creator and now rebooted as a legacy sequel, led by the Wayans brothers who started it all.
I'm Stephen Thompson, and today we are talking about Scary Movie on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
Joining me today is NPR producer J.C.
Howard.
Hey, J.C.
Hello, hello.
Also with us is Ronald Young Jr.
He's the host of the film and television review podcast Leaving the Theater.
Hey, Ronald.
Hello, Stephen.
Also with us is freelance music and culture journalist Rihanna Cruz.
Hey, Rihanna.
What's up?
There is a was-op joke in this movie.
Ripped from the cultural headlines.
So relevant.
It's astonishingly relevant.
So the original Scary Movie came out in 2000 as a parody of horror franchises like Scream.
And I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Since then, Scary Movie has followed a trajectory familiar to fans of the movies.
It was originally spoofing.
It got sequels, then it got passed to different directors and writers, and then it fizzled out entirely.
Now Scary Movie is getting a reboot, slash legacy sequel, which is itself a parody of other reboots.
Slash legacy sequels.
The Wayans brothers are back on board.
Many, many Wayanses pop up in the cast, led by Marlon and Sean.
Other familiar faces return as well, including Anna Faris and Regina Hall, while a new generation turns up to face the return of the dreaded Ghostface.
It's in theaters now.
Rihanna Cruz, I'm going to start with you.
What did you think of Scary Movie?
All right.
I'll put it simply.
Is it a good movie?
Debatable.
That's what we're here to do, Rihanna.
Yeah, I know.
Why don't you tell us?
Do we expect any scary movie to be a good movie, though?
I would say no.
And I think because of that, the bar was on the floor and I had fun.
You know, I love the scary movie franchise personally.
I love parody movies.
I watch all the scary movies so frequently, like even four and five, which are generationally terrible and have pretty much only boner jokes.
I love them.
They make me laugh.
This movie, I was entertained.
I laughed a lot.
Most I could ask for.
It's bloated.
Not everything lands.
I think there's a lot of dated jokes in it that feel like they were made six years to a decade ago, at best generous between the, the doofy character, which should have been left in the early 2000s, if at all.
There's some transphobia here that i don't really get down with.
But there is a space for this kind of movie and i'm happy to see it back, And I also am like a Wayans apologist.
Like I watch everything they do and they make me laugh.
I mean, look, man, I rocked with In Living Color in the early 90s.
I watched the hell out of that show.
And did every joke land then?
No, it didn't.
But the ones that do really do.
The ones that do do.
Right.
Like I grew up on that.
You know, my dad watched that all the time.
And I watched that with my dad when I was like.
Oh, Stephen, yes.
You, like my father, also watched that show.
Yeah, I don't know.
It made me laugh.
I think the bar is truly on the floor and it stepped over the bar.
I laughed more than I thought I would.
Okay.
Thank you, Rihanna.
J.C.
Howard, how about you?
This is decidedly a dumb movie.
But you already knew that.
So what I'll say is this.
If you're looking for likable characters, some smart and often biting satire, tasteful jokes, a tight plot, you're at the wrong movie.
Oh, my God.
I mean, yeah.
Stop setting me up like this, Jay-Z.
Stop it.
Yeah, this is not what you're getting.
Once you alluded to kind of subtlety, I was like, okay, Jay-Z's doing a bit.
That is not what this movie is, even in the least bit.
This was written largely by the Waynes brothers.
So the bottom line is, like Rihanna, if you like the things that they do, you will like this.
If you don't, then you won't.
And for me...
I will be honest, it had some nostalgia appeal.
I was in middle school or high school, somewhere in between there, when the first two scary movies came out, which were the ones that had the Wayans brothers involved with them.
And at that time, the humor was expressly for me.
A middle school, high school boy, the sex jokes, the weed jokes, the stereotypes, the latent homophobia.
Yeah.
They all spoke to like this middle schooler in me.
There is a chance to really reinvent and to do something new that reminds us of the original but brings a certain growth and maturity.
And they successfully avoided that growth at all costs.
The humor is there.
It's not for me anymore.
That same humor that I laughed at when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, that humor isn't for me.
But they delivered what they promised.
And there were, that said, some things that did work for me.
There was a lot of meta jokes about the franchise itself.
There was commentary and references to crypto and Twitch streaming and EV charging infrastructure.
And, without saying too much, there was a little bit of K-pop in there that was incredibly delightful to me.
The thing is that stuff accounts for maybe a third of the movie.
You know, the rest is the same five or six jokes from 20 years ago.
You know, like I said, if you like it, then you'll love it.
How about you, Ronald?
Okay, so to continue JC's point in this order, Scary Movie 1 2 3 4, 5 these were my ages when they came out.
16, 17, 19, 22, 29.
And I walk into Scary Movie at 42.
So...
So I feel like what I absolutely thought this movie was about to be was what it kind of avoided.
It stepped up to the line and stepped back, which was Gen X and elder millennials dealing with living in a Gen Z world now, which I thought was going to be very fun and funny.
They tap it a few times.
Anna Faris shows up.
Regina Hall shows up.
They are very funny.
I'm reminded that they are good at this.
The Wayans brothers show up.
I'm reminded that they are good at this.
And then they just throw wall to wall references at us from the beginning to end.
Jokes that are coming so fast.
I can't even laugh at them because I'm trying to read the screen and it's clicking away from it.
16 year old Ronald probably would have watched this and enjoyed it.
But 42 year old Ronald wants to know that the Wayans are also growing up with me.
And there were a few times in which they're making commentary about race, about gender, about queerness.
And I want to know that what they actually think of these things.
And I'm not actually getting that.
I'm getting just very sophomoric jokes.
So it was okay, but it could have been good.
Steven, this could have been a great film and they just didn't want to do it.
All the ingredients were there.
I'm really glad, Ronald, that you made that last point about kind of the absence of point of view.
That comes through in a lot of these references.
I mean my issue with these movies in general and with a lot of kind of post-Naked Gun spoof franchises, of which this is one of many.
One of my biggest issues with them is that they tend to give you references in lieu of jokes.
Yes, Stephen!
And there's a bit here.
At one point there's a whole bit where it's like the one character has a drug stash and oh no, we gave the drug stash to the kids for Halloween and then.
And then it's like, oh, the kids are on drugs.
Ha ha ha.
And I'm like, okay, well, here's where you're going to get your weapons reference.
And the kids are running around like the kids in weapons.
And one of them says six, seven.
And that's the joke.
I laughed, Steven.
Rihanna, God bless you.
I'm so glad.
I laughed.
I did not.
I'm laughing at Steven saying six, seven.
I'm not laughing.
And so to me, so much of it was just like, oh, here's where they're going to do the parody of this.
Oh, that church looks like the church in Sinners.
Here we go.
And so to me, I wanted more jokes.
Where this film worked for me somewhat.
I mean, naturally this is going to be a meta property, right.
Like, meta is in this film's bones.
This is a parody of a meta satire.
Of course you're going to have opportunities to kind of play around with the long and winding road that got this franchise to this point.
And some of the jokes that they're able to work in about that did work for me.
There were a couple of kind of fun running jokes that were referencing horror movie tropes.
There's a pretty, I thought pretty funny bit where the love interest who is very, very heavily telegraphed to be the killer.
I thought some of that stuff was pretty funny.
Um, But to me, getting back to what Ronald said, I just thought so many of the jokes were so toothless.
There's this vibe that runs through it and it runs through the film.
It runs through the marketing of the film.
That's very like, they're back and cancel culture and better watch out.
But then it doesn't have anything to say.
Yeah.
Rihanna alluded to kind of some transphobia and I definitely got transphobic vibes off of it, but it mostly is just like here's a trans character.
Right.
And that's the joke.
Like that's the comedy, that this person exists, which is kind of the only place in the movie where I was like I don't know.
I don't really know about that.
I agree.
And obviously like I don't want it to come from a point of view that is worse or that is actively hostile.
But it just doesn't have anything to say.
And so there's like a scene set in a subway that's full of kind of these commentaries on like Karens and stuff like that.
And again, that just feels so dated.
Yeah.
To me, this franchise and this film just don't really land for me.
And some of this, I think, is generational.
The original scary movie came out when I was in my mid to late 20s.
And I grew up on Airplane and The Naked Gun and Hot Shots Part Deux.
That kind of original Zucker movie.
Era of spoofs.
You know the david zucker famously kind of took over this franchise for a while and piloted it into the ground, unintended.
Yes, exactly for me.
Like this film, if you are notionally open to this franchise, if you have enjoyed these movies.
Either have a communal experience in the theater with lots and lots of other people, or either watch it at 2 o'clock in the afternoon or 2 o'clock in the morning in a state of mind to enjoy it.
Ah, I get what you're saying.
Shorty state of mind, if you will.
Yeah.
I went in with as open a mind as possible.
I really, really, really came in ready to laugh.
And I only chuckled lightly.
I was chucking it up in there.
I got to be honest.
I was having a good time.
I wish I'd seen this with you.
I know.
Yeah.
I was having a really good time.
I wish I'd been in that state of mind.
There's one thing I wanted to point out about the transphobia and I will also include racism.
That's in this film.
There's a scene in this film in which there's some commentary about police brutality.
And I feel like what I got from that was, again, not a perspective, but more like a pointing to it.
Yeah.
Rihanna, you just said that.
Like when you said they said, here's a trans person.
Isn't this hilarious?
That's kind of like the biggest issue that I have here is to say, if you're going to make the joke, either make the joke and say it with your chest or don't mention it at all.
Right.
Because it's like you're not making the joke.
Now you're just referencing it as funny, which just makes me say like I need to know what you think about this so that I know like, are you being smart?
Are you writing something or are you just confused at the prospect?
And it seems like it's the latter.
I can't believe I'm on here as like a scary movie defender.
But what I will say.
I love it.
What I will say is like, do you come to these movies for perspective?
Cause I've rewatched all of them recently, you know, and granted, like the third scary movie, which is one of the Zucker movies and it's the one where they parody signs.
Like that's my favorite scary movie.
Cause I think it's like top to bottom jokes that make me laugh, but like It reminds me a lot of my favorite movie, which is Austin Powers Goldmember.
But, you know, like this is the vibe that I'm going for.
Right.
But when I watch all the movies, I don't know.
I'm not really looking for anything beyond jokes that make me chuckle.
You know it's the same type of humor as something like Family Guy or American Dad, like the Seth MacFarlane type of comedy where it's like
You're making a reference to a thing that I know and that's making me laugh, because I could put the pieces together.
And that's as much as I'm expecting.
I'm not really going into a Wayans movie expecting them to comment on the state of the world.
I don't know.
Maybe it's a generational thing.
Well, let me just say one thing.
Okay, you're right.
However, I think that's a problem.
Mm.
I think the fact that they are doing that, I take issue with.
So I feel like if you are going to do parody and do that and you don't have a perspective, then you're absolutely right.
We end up walking into a movie just being like oh, we're just supposed to laugh at this, even though we walk back outside and things feel just a little bit more tense than that.
That's all i'm saying about parody and comedy, and i don't think you're wrong, because that's exactly.
I feel like now i have to switch my brain to say i'm walking into a parody that's not going to have a real much of a perspective.
I think i have to kind of come down in between the two of you in a lot of ways and i think, in typical jc fashion, i'll offer one of the most generous rooms of this movie.
God bless, man.
I appreciate you so much.
It is parody.
It is not as much satire as it should be.
The movie being what it is, I think is why some of the meta jokes worked for me.
We've kind of talked about this a little bit, but the original movie was produced by Miramax, which at the time was run by Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob Weinstein.
Marlon Wayans has talked about how –
In a sense, they lost this franchise to the Weinsteins, who made those other three sequels without the Waynes.
And so I feel like a lot of the jokes about Anna and Regina doing some of those sequels and some of the meta commentary about Hollywood, I feel like.
For them.
This was their kind of way to process everything that happened to them with this franchise.
This was Marlon's way, one of Marlon's ways in real life processing acceptance, his own actual acceptance of his transgender child.
And like in some ways it does work.
Like some of them land and some of them don't, because in some ways they are – I think they are doing something deeper.
They are examining their own – feelings about these things, but not actually telling us exactly how they feel.
They're processing it out loud in front of us.
And I can see this movie in the shadow of those interviews.
I can see this movie in the context of those interviews.
And I see that something deeper.
However, none of it was there on the screen.
So like how much credit does this movie – yeah, exactly.
I got to review what's on the screen.
Which is why I don't defend this movie from that perspective.
I just like – this is my own therapy.
This is my way of processing it.
I appreciate it.
I love it.
I am totally here for it.
That is a very generous read, and I will try to think about the movie through that lens.
I think that's really useful.
I will say I did find so much of what they were actually parodying to be some of the most obvious stuff and some of the most dated stuff.
The fact that they're still primarily parodying Scream.
The 2022 Screams.
At that, which gone and forgotten, like water over stone in my brain.
I was watching this.
I was like, am I supposed to understand?
And I just think like man, I mean one thing that doing a horror movie spoof should give you is is a lot of reference material to work with.
And obviously, this movie is not going to be able to touch on obsession or back rooms.
But man, what about the Conjuring movies?
I could probably write you a satire or a parody of the Conjuring movies, which are so silly.
Where's that?
Where's Midsommar?
Where is Hereditary?
There have been so many huge horror properties and they're just kind of still mucking around with Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
And then with these kind of glancing, look, we also saw weapons.
Yeah.
I managed to like clear a very very very very, very low bar and also feel like a missed opportunity.
A lot of this movie feels like it was cobbled together from screenplay drafts over the past 15 years.
And they like cherry picked scenes from each of them.
You know, as they were developing it over time.
And it leads to a little bit of disjointedness with the parodies.
These are sketch comedy guys.
They've always been sketch comedy guys.
And there are elements of this that feel very sketch based.
And that is a very hard thing to translate into a feature film.
Yeah, it feels like you're stitching together like two minute TikToks.
Over and over and over again, you know?
Of course my reference is I'm talking about like sketch comedy, like oh, in the late 90s, Mr Show.
But yeah, no.
That's the vibe.
It feels like it's cobbled together.
There's scenes that exist in their own world.
Like the scene where Shorty's doing Twitch streaming with Kaisenat.
I thought that was better.
That's like a little short in and of itself.
I thought that was one of the better scenes in the movie.
Sorry, go ahead.
I agree.
Yeah, no, totally.
I laughed a lot at that.
But I don't know.
I like...
I think a lot of the references for me felt dated but I don't know what they could have done to bring it up to speed without the movie becoming corny.
I don't know.
Exactly to your point, Stephen, it might as well have been a series of sketches.
This was a sketch comedy bit that was very loosely woven together.
But when they found something that they thought they could have fun with, I think that they showed a deep knowledge and appreciation.
Like people who have watched Get Out and Sinners over and, over and, over and over again and found something that they thought was funny and said hey, let's put this out there and see if other people laugh.
I think we're all coming down in variations on the same place, which is, if this is what you're into here it is.
The movie comments on that, though.
The movie even makes a joke like this is not a smart comedy.
And I do think we're in like a smart comedy epidemic where you go to the movies and you know you don't laugh.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Like comedies that aren't designed to make people laugh.
They're just situationally funny.
And the fact that I went to the theater and laughed my ass off, like that says something.
That's a testament.
I also think we put more thought into this review than they did into writing this movie, the most robust panel I've been a part of.
All right.
Well, I think that's an excellent place to leave it.
Ronald Young Jr., Rihanna Cruz, JC Howard, thanks so much for being here.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having me.
You're welcome, Stephen.
This episode was produced by Hafsah Fathima, Liz Metzger and Mike Katzeff and edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy.
Hello, Come In provides our theme music.
Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.
I'm Stephen Thompson, and we will see you all next time.
