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Scary Movie 3

A Dim Reaper's Scary Corn Crop

By Gene Seymour | STAFF WRITER

October 24, 2003

(PG-13). This time, "The Ring," "Signs," "8 Mile" and "The Matrix" are prominent victims of this seemingly unstoppable lampoon machine. Crass, crude and sledgehammer-subtle. Yet, you can't help giggling yourself stupid, even at the more obvious sight gags. Anna Faris returns with Charlie Sheen, Simon Rex, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Queen Latifah and George Carlin among those along for the ride. Directed by David Zucker. 1:30 (vulgarities, drug references, racy humor, cartoon-style violence). At area theaters.

Films like "Scary Movie 3" aren't movies so much as purging rituals for consumers gorged on pop cultural ephemera. You don't patronize such enterprises in search of refinement or sophisticated discourse on genre conventions. You go to wallow in the silliness, even when it gets tacky and especially when it gets tasteless.

This time, David Zucker, the veteran goofball behind "Airplane!" and the "Naked Gun" series, picks up where the Wayans brothers left off with the previous "Scarys" ("Scaries"?). For whatever reason, the change gives the franchise a noticeable spring to its step - though such things are always relative when the corn is high and the comedy is low.

The corn, by the way, is in the backyard of a widowed minister-turned-farmer (Charlie Sheen), who finds some strange things happening to his crops. "I wonder what they're saying to us," he quips when he finds his corn shredded. Camera pulls back to an aerial shot. Carved into the terrain are landing instructions with an arrow pointing to the farm house.

The minister-farmer-widower's nitwit brother (Simon Rex) is oblivious to this - and for that matter, everything else except his dream to become the greatest white rapper in history. He's distracted from his mission by intrepid TV newswoman Cindy Campbell (welcome back, Anna Faris), who seems the only one in the world who thinks something funny-peculiar is going on with his brother's crops.

Cindy's already got her hands full with a creepy little nephew (Drew Mikusa), who can't stop prophesying in public, and a videotape that kills anyone who watches it - including her best friend (welcome back, Regina Hall) and a couple of Catholic school girls who look a lot like Pamela Anderson and Jenna McCarthy. She takes the tape to the Oracle (Queen Latifah), who's so clairvoyant she keeps finishing Cindy's sentences and calling basketball scores hours before the games start.

At this point, is it really necessary to disclose in advance all the scattershot jokes at the expense of funerals, Catholic priests, family values, bodily functions, Michael Jackson (who's not really here), Simon Cowell (who is) and hip-hop gangsterism? And why are we not surprised - yet somehow reassured - when the president of these United States turns out to be Leslie Nielsen?