Scary Movie 3 (PG-13) ★½

The Scary Movie horror spoof franchise goes for a third round, this time taking shots at Signs, The Ring and, bizarrely, 8 Mile.

Story

The reemergence of horror movies in recent years has helped create the most inescapable monster of all: The spoof. This latest lampoon strings together scenes and characters primarily from three films, Signs, The Ring and 8 Mile, with a little Matrix thrown in for good measure, and unifies them into a single 90-minute feature. Is it funny? Sure--on occasion. The film follows Scary Movie series heroine Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), now a college grad starting her first professional job as a local TV news reporter. Investigating the mysterious appearance of crop circles in ex-minister Tom Logan's (Charlie Sheen) farm, Cindy develops feelings for Tom's brother George (Simon Rex), a wannabe rapper. Suddenly her friend Brenda (Regina Hall), becomes the latest to be killed seven days after watching a mysterious videotape circulating around. After seeking advice from Brenda's Oracle-like Aunt Shaneequa (Queen Latifah), and having a run-in with The Architect (George Carlin), Cindy learns she is ''The One,'' and the crop circles and videotape deaths are somehow connected. It's up to her to help the president (Leslie Nielsen) prevent an alien invasion.

Acting

SM3 could have put Sheen, no stranger to this genre (Hot Shots!), to its cast, but the actor is pitifully wasted. His character Tom has to be the most boringly written in the film and should have been more of a wiseass. His real-life wife, actress Denise Richards, has a small role as his on-screen wife but her lines in their one scene together, a reenactment from Signs in which she's been hit by a truck and reveals her dying wishes to her husband, could have been much more creative than ''NO MORE SEX!'' As Tom's brother, sweet but dimwitted George, Rex has much funnier lines and sight gags and the chance to put his perfectly clueless expression to work. SM3 alum Faris, like Sheen, falls victim to some unfunny dialogue and her character Cindy is too over-the-top stupid; she irritatingly delivers practically every line as if she was asking a question. Hall, who had some of the most brilliant, laugh-out-loud moments in the original Scary Movie, is completely wasted--her hilarious character Brenda is killed off early on and reappearances of her lifeless corpse are all you see the rest of the movie. On a brighter note, there are some great cameos by Queen Latifah as Aunt Shaneequa, Eddie Griffin as Orpheus and Anthony Anderson as George's friend Mahalik.

Direction

The Scary Movie franchise was originally created for Dimension Films in 1999 by the Wayans brothers, who absconded from the series entirely after the second installment. The studio confidently gave the Scary Movie 3 reins to veteran comedy director David Zucker, whose '80s spoofs--Airplane!, Top Secret! and the Naked Gun series--rang true with brilliance. Sadly, with Scary Movie 3, the director/producer demonstrates how out of touch he is with pop culture and spoof fans. While there are a number of good gags scattered throughout the movie, including a jab at M. Night Shyamalan's cameo appearance in Signs, Zucker fails to assemble them into a coherent comedy. Zucker also lacks the irreverence that Scary Movie director Keenen Ivory Wayans has and too often falls back on bathroom humor and excrement gags such as stepping (or in this case, kneeling) in dog poo. The result is a spoof that lacks the scandalous effect of his hit comedy Airplane! and the cleverness of his 1984 World War II send-up Top Secret!. But the most baffling thing about SM3, however, is the spoofing of the film 8 Mile, which not only doesn't fit in a parody of scary movies, but was also better parodied by Jamie Kennedy in last summer's Malibu's Most Wanted.

Bottom Line

Those who haven't seen the movies being spoofed should skip Scary Movie 3 altogether. Those who can pick them out will laugh at some of the references, but will also have to sit through some painfully bad scenes and plotlines to get to them.