Scary Movie 5 (dir. Malcolm D.Lee)

To call this ‘film’ a disaster would only serve to compliment it further, as the worst received films seem to attract the most attention. Monstrosities like Disaster Movie and Epic Movie have adorned our cinema screens over the last couple of years expecting us to guffaw in unison at the complete lunacy at what we are seeing. In Scary Movie 5’s case, new depths have been reached, as this pile of cinematic garbage is most certainly in the same league as those or, more recently, Movie 43. It’s essentially a clueless collection of popular movie spoofs intertwined with tiresome celebrity cameos and cheap slapstick comedy that succeeds ashamedly in producing something as obnoxious as its predecessors. Malcolm D. Lee’s Scary Movie debut is by far the most ludicrous piece of cinema projected onto a screen in quite some time, and by far the most objectionable of the pitiful Scary Movie series. His screenwriters David Zucker and Pat Proft are clearly unconcerned with creating a narrative, instead opting for supposedly satirical parodies of Inception, The Help, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Mama, Evil Dead, The Cabin in the Woods, Black Swan and the Fifty Shades of Greynovels. Unsurprisingly, all of these are neither tasteful nor funny in any shape of form, indicating that the sole aim of the Scary Movie 5 team is to rinse the remaining money left in an otherwise dead-and-buried series. From the start Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan poke fun at themselves with the aid of ‘Yakety Sax’ - which doesn’t bode well for the remaining 82 minutes. The most striking of Scary Movie 5’s banalities is its attempt to construct a plot, when all the makers really want to do is present an inconsequential series of set-piece nods to other films. At one point, Ashley Tisdale tries to become a ballet-dancer purely for the sake of nonsensical Black Swan gags. The entire film seems to be a mickey-take of the film Mama, but the team behind this trash forget about halfway in and just conjure up new ways of poking fun at other cinematic exploits. Here and there they’ll attempt some comedy through the use of misogyny, stereotypical gags and downright racism, all of which are in embarrassingly poor taste, but ultimately all they want to do is present characters being hit with inanimate objects and expect us to think it’s clever. This is a film made solely for the box office takings by a group of people so eager to recycle the same old smut we’ve seen a million times before. In addition to this, Scary Movie 5 is littered with irritating cameos from celebrities, whose appearances are supposed to conjure up some humor from thin air. Usher and Snoop Dogg make uncomfortable appearances and, much like the film as a whole, depend on the sense of humor akin to that of an ape to give them credence. Even though this is an entirely gratuitous piece of production-line drivel, still expect it to procure an impressive run at the box-office. Not surprisingly, those with a penchant for slapstick comedy and crude innuendos will flock in their droves. Let’s just hope that those who do have a brain will avoid it like the plague; as the plague is vastly more preferable.

Rating; 0/5.