Scary Movie 3 (2003)

Scary Movie 3 arrives in 2003 as the third entry in a franchise already running on fumes. David Zucker inherits the director's chair from the Wayans family, and the result is a patchwork of gags aimed at The Ring, Signs, and 8 Mile. The plot concerns crop circles, a cursed videotape, and an alien invasion, assembled with the narrative discipline of a clip show. Anna Faris returns as Cindy Campbell, now a television news anchor, and she remains the most committed performer in a film that seldom deserves her.

On the matter of social consciousness, the picture is close to inert. The ensemble is multiracial by the standards of 2003 studio comedy, with Regina Hall, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, and Queen Latifah filling out the margins, though the casting follows spoof tradition more than any deliberate agenda. A rap battle and a white hoodie mistaken for Klan garb gesture at race, and both land as punchlines. Cindy's position as a female lead and anchor registers faintly, since she exists to be the reasonable center of an unreasonable movie. There is no LGBTQ+ presence, no environmental theme, no critique of wealth, no body-positive message, no depiction of neurodivergence, and no history to revise.

What remains is a comedy that wants only to land jokes, and lands perhaps one in five. The humor is crude, the targets are soft, and the whole enterprise carries the faint odor of contractual obligation. No sermonizing, no moral instruction, no attempt to improve the viewer. In an era that would soon demand more from its comedies, this one asks nothing of anyone. That is its single, modest virtue.

Scary Movie 3 is a sequel in the Scary Movie Collection. It opened at number one at the North American box office, grossing $48.1 million in its opening weekend, the highest October opening at the time. It won no Academy Awards. It is not a remake, not based on a true story, not a book adaptation, and not a superhero film. Its thematic tags are: sequel, box_office_number_one.

{"thematic_tags": ["sequel", "box_office_number_one"]}