Friday 12 April 2013

Review: Scary Movie 5

World of Blackout Film Review

Scary Movie V Poster

Scary Movie 5
Cert: 15 / 86 mins / Dir. Malcolm D. Lee



It's hard to imagine anyone making a comedy film which is outshone by the EE/Kevin Bacon ad*1 that precedes it, but messrs Lee and Zucker have done it! It's not 'offensive', it's not 'gross-out', it's not 'risky', it's just not funny. I know, I know, that's entirely subjective. There were a handful of people in the audience that found it highly amusing, to the point where they were giggling and guffawing through the parts which aren't meant to have jokes (such as the setups and weak links between the appalling sketches). I didn't find the film funny, but even I could tell where the laughs were supposed to be. Although interestingly, the audience I was with left during the gag-reel which intersperses the credits. After a whopping 75ish minutes, they were already sick of the film and left at the earliest opportunity (not that the gag-reel is any better or worse than the rest of the film).

Cycling haphazardly between the plots of Mama, Black Swan and Rise of the Planet of the Apes*2, this is an old joke, badly told. That this has been made doesn't surprise me (sadly), but the fact that this has been distributed to cinemas, in 2013, will baffle me to my dying day. The Weinsteins are old enough to fucking well know better. As is every single person who appears on-screen. A script that might have come across as self-referential on paper seems to be acted out by people who have Saturday Night Live as their high-watermark when it comes to performance comedy.

But at least I wasn't disappointed by it, in that it's exactly as awful as I'd feared from that trailer. Hey, at least they didn't make it in 3D, right?



Is the trailer representative of the film?
Oh, yes..


Did I laugh, cry, gasp and sigh when I was supposed to?
Mainly just crying. Inside.


Does it achieve what it sets out to do?
Not a fucking clue.


Pay at the cinema, Rent on DVD or just wait for it to be on the telly?
Never see this, ever.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
That's putting it mildly.


Will I watch it again?
I fucking hope not.


Is there a Wilhelm Scream?
No.


And because you won't be happy until I've given it a score...


*1 And not the first one, which had a level of originality at least, but the second one (which the internet doesn't seem to have), which uses the same jokes to massively diminishing returns.
*2 That's right, two of those three aren't horror films. I know this is nothing new for the "Scary" Movie franchise, but they could at least pretend they're trying.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

1 comment:

  1. i have seen this film at the cinima and was expecting it to be as funny as scary move 4 but found to be a complete waste of time there was no suprises in the movie you could see what was comming from a mile off and i found the jokes and the secens that was suppost to be funny old and over done this movie was suppost to also be a piss take of mama and paranormal activity and yet it still was not scary so all in all i find the movie to be a complete waste of money because it did not live up to sits name scary movie i suggest u dont see it because you would be disappointed that you went to see a movie whitch is comple garbage

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