Scary Movie 3 (2003)
Film:
DVD:

Written by Craig Mazin & Pat Proft
Directed by David Zucker
Starring Anna Faris, Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen

Features:

• Running audio commentary by director Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writers Mazin & Proft
  
• Deleted scenes and alternate ending with optional commentary
  
• Outtakes and bloopers
  
• Featurette on the alternate ending
  
• Two making of featurettes
  

Released by Miramax
Rating: PG-13
Region: 1
Anamorphic: Yes.

My Advice: Rent it if you must.

Cindy Campbell (Faris) is back and she's a newscaster who's stumbled onto what could be the story of the year...if only anyone would pay attention to her. Unless she's doing gripping stories about twins, breasts or pole dancing, nobody gives a damn. Still, she knows about...well, something. It's the videotape that, seven days after viewing it, you wind up dead. No, wait--it's the crop, ah, formation that appeared at the farm of Tom (Sheen). No, maybe it's the fact that Tom's brother, George (Rex), is going to be the next rap superstar. Well, regardless, something big is happening...and if they finish writing the script by shooting, you'll find out what.

Okay, first up: have not seen the second movie. With this franchise, though, I don't think that matters terribly much. The first film was so funny that I almost had to change pants afterwards. However, this film suffers from a creative team that has no idea what made the first film funny. Instead of doing a worthy follow-up, they've turned out an Airplane 2 for our times. These folks obviously understand that nothing exceeds like excess. They think that any bodily excretion at all will send us into howls of uncontrolled laughter. Smacking people in the head is even funnier. And if all else fails, throw some tits on the screen. That always works.

Trouble is, it's not funny. Seriously not funny. Part of the problem is they're trying to mix up genres: did we really need Matrix and 8 Mile parodied in the same film? The seams show badly and the script just smells of last minute changes that restructure everything. Not that I have anything against rewrites, but at least don't let it smell that way.

Basically, a lot of people enjoyed this film. If you are one of those people--and if you are, God help you--then you'll enjoy this DVD presentation. The commentary proves a lot of what I've said above right. When the folks aren't talking over each other and cracking in-jokes or other simply unfunny non sequiturs, they're praising themselves for placing head bonks into a scene. They'll count them for you, too. Only seldom do they actually talk about the filming process or provide any useful information--and it's rare enough that anyone sane should just skip the whole thing.

The deleted scenes are typical of what you find on a DVD: they're there to take up space. Seldom are any pearls found among such swine. The entire ending was replaced: thus you're spared a scene in which a character, having turned into a giant Hulk, shoves an alien's head up its big green ass, breaks it off, and then farts it into a crowd of other aliens, knocking them down. I know: hilarious, right? Oy. Blooper reel is about as funny as everything else.

The featurette about the alternate ending is more interesting than the alternate ending--at least here we get to see how they shot the thing and how they came up with the alien suits. The first making-of featurette is your typical fare: they do a round robin via interviews where they praise everyone in the cast and crew one by one. "Blowing Smoke," HTQ4 calls it. And rightly so. The second featurette, in which they talk about the film as though it were Citizen Kane, is funny in principle, but not necessarily in execution.

Like I said, if you dig the film then you're set as far as this DVD goes. The same level of lukewarm humor prevails throughout. If you haven't seen the film and want to catch up on the franchise, don't do more than rent it. But only if you must.