Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Scary Movie 3 Blu-ray Movie Review

Three (and/or three point five) is the charm.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 6, 2011

What a difference new writers and a director can make. The first two Scary Movie outings were of course Wayans Brothers offerings, with all that that implies. The films were often undeniably funny, but they were also slipshod, overly juvenile and obsessed with sex and other adolescent issues. Of course it’s hard to completely remove a parody from sexual and adolescent territory, so don’t go into Scary Movie 3 (or in this case the slightly more sexual and adolescent unrated Scary Movie 3.5) thinking that those elements have completely disappeared, for they most certainly have not. But with co-writers Craig Mazin and Pat Proft bringing their innate silliness to the project, and with David Zucker at the helm (and also contributing gags left and right, at least according to the commentary), Scary Movie 3 is a decidedly more consistent enterprise than either of its predecessors, and it even manages something akin to actual “smart” comedy along the way. Focusing mostly on skewering The Ring and Signs, with a hodgepodge of other cultural references zinging by with the speed of sound, Scary Movie 3 very artfully blends elements of its two main filmic “victims” together, while working in a number of unexpected, but often very funny, other zingers that involve everything from 8 Mile to The Matrix to The Others to Zucker’s own Naked Gun series. One completely unintentional piece of humor, especially seen now with the aid of some cultural zeitgeist hindsight, is the spectacle of seeing one of today’s most reviled Hollywood celebrities (Charlie Sheen) playing a parody version of a role initiated by one of yesterday’s most reviled Hollywood celebrities (Mel Gibson in Signs). That may add a bit to the film’s cachet for certain cynical types, but the fact is Scary Movie 3 manages to easily outdistance either Scary Movie or Scary Movie 2 in outright lunacy and genuine heartfelt and often gutbusting laughs.

Zucker of course first rose to fame with such films as Airplane! and it’s notable to see the difference in approach between him in that film and the Wayans, his predecessors, in Scary Movie 2, to cite just one example. One of Airplane!’s funniest bits was the “I speak jive!” scene with iconic television June Cleaver (Barbara Billingsley) cast completely against type and stealing the sequence quite handily as a result. The Wayans take that same idea—uptight white people appropriating African American patois—and grind it into the ground in the opening Exorcist parody which plays as a prelude to the main storyline of Scary Movie 2. For all his “gag excess,” Zucker knows how to trim a gag to its essence and to only overplay his hand if it leads to more laughs, and that knowledge is what helps lift Scary Movie 3 to greater heights of hilarity.

Mazin and Proft on the other hand bring not just a great grasp of setting up jokes and then delivering fantastic punchlines, but also a firmer control of utilizing disparate sources to create a new satirical hybrid. In Scary Movie 3, the Signs plotline of a questioning former minister Tom (Sheen) and his less than knife-sharp brother George (Simon Rex) preparing for an onslaught of aliens is folded into The Ring’s premise of a “killer videotape” via a relationship between Cindy (Anna Faris) and George. Cindy’s oft-killed friend Brenda (Regina Hall) has seen the malevolent tape and has reached the end of her allotted week after viewing when she urges Cindy to come over and keep her company as the seven days ticks toward its conclusion. (A funny prelude to the main Scary Movie 3 story has Jenny McCarthy and Pam Anderson dealing with the effects of the tape).

Rather surprisingly the two parodies coexist rather well with each other, but Proft, Mazin and Zucker of course do not stop there. George wants to pursue a career as a rap star, leading to a brief send-up of 8 Mile, and in one of the film’s biggest laughs, Tom walks into a room supposedly containing his daughter but gets suspicious that the miniature figure under a veil is not in fact his offspring, a la Nicole Kidman in The Others. In fact the punchline to that farcical sequence almost resulted in a lawsuit from the object of its joke. The film also brings in Zucker’s Naked Gun favorite Leslie Nielsen, this time as a dimwitted President who manages to screw up just about anything he attempts to do, even as the world is about to be invaded by countless hoards of approaching aliens. The Matrix gets a couple of pokes aimed at at as well with some great cameos by Queen Latifah and George Carlin.

Scary Movie 3 had a somewhat bumpy ride to its eventual big screen success. Though the filmmakers were aiming for a PG-13 rating, their frequently fairly sexual humor led to a threatened R, and the film ultimately bowed with a lot of its most supposedly objectionable content excised. This “3.5” version restores a lot of that content (but not all, as the deleted scenes amply proves), including one of the more controversial jokes which involves Pam Anderson holding a furless cat (I’ll let the more prescient among you who haven’t seen the film yet come up with the punchline). The fact is the film doesn’t really need this more adult content to land many of its largest laughs. Scary Movie 3 is surely funnier than either Scary Movie or Scary Movie 2, and, no, I won’t stop calling it Shirley.

Scary Movie 3 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Scary Movie 3 is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Despite coming just a couple of years after Scary Movie 2, this outing looks considerably better in high definition than does its predecessor. Colors are bolder and better saturated, and fine detail is manifestly more apparent. Best of all, black levels are very solid, and shadow detail is excellent in almost all scenes. There are a couple of uses of stock footage (the establishing shots of the White House being notable examples) where the image quality is decidedly more degraded, but overall this is a very sharp and appealing presentation on Blu-ray that should easily satisfy the film's fans.

Scary Movie 3 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3.5 features an incredibly boisterous lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix that, like its predecessor, features a thumping wild ride of low frequencies courtesy in this case of its 8 Mile spoof. The film features a lot of sound effects dotting the soundfield, and fidelity is strong throughout all frequency ranges, with excellent dynamic range. Surround channels are used decently, if actually a bit less consistently than in Scary Movie 2, though several key sequences do offer some great immersion, including the funny climax where the Signs and The Ring plotlines intersect in the cellar of the Logan farmhouse. Dialogue is clear and crisp and very well mixed with the effects and occasional score cues.

Scary Movie 3 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Director David Zucker, Producer Robert K. Weiss, and Writers Craig Mazin and Pat Proft. This is a jokey commentary, filled with the guys taking credit for gags that land and mercilessly blaming each other for the ones that fall flat. The most interesting thing about this commentary is their frequent references to things that were cut from the finished film, including the long alternate ending provided as one of the supplements. For actual informational value this commentary rates about a 2. For outright entertainment, it's a solid 8.
• Making Scary Movie 3 Featurette (SD; 23:21) has more interviews than the typical EPK and for that reason is a bit more interesting than these sorts of things usually are.
• Making Scary Movie 3 For Real Featurette (SD; 4:53) is a little parody of a Making Of featurette, with various participants comparing the film to everything from Shakespeare's The Tempest to Sophie's Choice.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes with Optional Commentary by David Zucker, Robert K. Weiss, Craig Mazin and Pat Proft (SD; 20:23). There are a ton of great gags in here and these are definitely worth watching, but the commentary is also often hilarious, so watch this one twice.
• Outtakes and Bloopers (SD; 3:59)
• Alternate Ending (SD; 15:28) is a fascinating and often laugh out loud funny different ending for the film, one which manages to work in bits of A Beautiful Mind and The Incredible Hulk since heaven knows enough other films hadn't been referenced already.
• Hulk vs. Aliens (SD; 4:08) is a brief look at the visual effects in the alternate ending.

Scary Movie 3 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Well, it may not be in genius territory, but compared to its two predecessors at least, Scary Movie 3 is decidedly smart comedy, filled with that patented Zucker pizzazz that made films like Airplane! and Naked Gun so much fun. The cultural references are fast and freewheeling and you never know quite what's going to be skewered next, which is part of the fun. Faris and crew are once again very funny and the writing is surprisingly sharp, rather artfully blending Signs and The Ring as well as virtually every other film you can mention. With good image and audio quality and a full array of supplemental material, this new Blu-ray comes Recommended.