When Scary Movie opened to $42 million in the summer of 2000, the Weinstein brothers had the Wayans brothers on the horn ready to negotiate and get a sequel going. According to Marlon Wayans, “we had a crappy deal on Scary Movie, but Scary Movie 2, we had $20 million against one, and on the third one, at first they promised us $30 million against one, then they made the same offer they did on the first one.” So they walked away, and let the Zucker Brothers direct Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4—but not before the Weinsteins could rip off their proposed premises. According to Marlon, “We got molested in them deals.”
Now that Harvey Weinstein’s in prison and Bob Weinstein is out of the film business, the Wayans are free to detail just how “nasty, ugly, and scheming” the former heads of Miramax and Dimension were; even better, the world gets another Scary Movie with the Wayans and, more importantly, Anna Faris and Regina Hall. I love Scream, but if Neve Campbell never returned to the franchise, I wouldn’t have cared. I would’ve happily watched Melissa Barrera once a year for the rest of my life in the new Scream. But not Scary Movie—those movies are nothing without Faris and Hall. Is there really any drop off in quality among the first four installments? Faris and Hall are more indispensable to Scary Movie than the Wayans; that’s one of the reasons 2013’s Scream 5 “bombed” (13 years ago, a comedy making $78 million against a $35 million budget was a disappointment).
But more than anything else, horror wasn’t having a moment in the early-2010s (if the fifth movie had come out in 2016, different story: you’ve got It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch). The thoroughly crass field of spoof films was totally out of vogue, although ironically, the Apatow universe meta-comedy This is the End came out within weeks of Scary Movie 5. There was a healthy popular cinema back then, when there were enough movies and audience members to make a spoof movie a sane proposition in the first place. In the 2020s, there have been so few mass cultural events outside of politics that making a spoof movie—not a satire, a spoof of recent movies—is practically impossible. Now that Obsession and Backrooms have inaugurated a new era, people will once again be able to point and laugh at the screen, thrilled they get the joke.
All you need to know about Scary Movie 6 is that the Wayans are back along with Faris and Hall. The plot, as it is, is completely in service of the jokes, most of which don’t land. This isn’t a hilarious comedy or an instant classic. It’s about as good as the first four movies. The overwhelming joy of seeing it was hearing people laugh at a thoroughly stupid comedy for the first time in years. Revivals are different: most people who go to see Office Space or Midnight Run have probably seen it before, and while there’ll always be some seeing it for the first time, the laughter at a comedy revival isn’t the same as a new release. Scary Movie 6 reminded me of that. More people saw it over the weekend than any comedy since The Hangover Part II in 2011. I hope more movies will feel free to be dumb again. It’s a good feeling.
And while the Wayans have their franchise back, they don’t have exclusivity with Faris and Hall. They’re one of film history’s classic comedy duos. Put them together again, in anything. Paul Thomas Anderson? Ready for your slapstick comedy?
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter: @NARCFILM