More miss than hit and with a limited shelf life

bob the moo

When a teenager is murdered in a small town, it is only the beginning of a murderous spree.  One group of teenagers in particular are targeted as the killer claims to know about a man that they accidentally killing exactly a year ago.

Inexplicably on it's third instalment, I figured that I must have given the series a raw deal by never watching any of it, so I went out to get the first movie and watch it.  My lasting impression will be of a film that is more miss than hit - never a good thing in spoofs.  All the best spoofs have miss-fires but the secret is to keep the gags coming so fast that it doesn't matter.  Here however the gags aren't consistent and rely more on a mix of specific movie spoofs and some very crude jokes that aren't funny.  It does have laughs in it but a film such as this lives and dies on it's laughs and this film needed more - far too often I was left waiting for a laugh.

While the film does have laughs, it relies heavily on impersonation of other films rather than out and out jokes.  While this is good in some regards it is mostly quite lazy and also gives the film a limited time where it is fresh and funny.  For example, as these films fade from memory, so the jokes will become less funny or relevant.  The best example of this is the Matrix spoof; I'm sure on release it was topical and original and drew many laughs, but seeing it now it just seems old - so many others have done it by now and it just seemed obvious rather than funny.

The cast are OK but they are very wide characters and none of them really have the spoof ability of, say, Leslie Nielsen.  The Wayans brothers are actually OK and seem happy to send themselves up.  Marlon is not that good, just playing a junkie type but Shawn conveys himself as gay and makes light of his show being cancelled.  Hall is cute and funny - her depiction of a black woman in a cinema may be slightly generalist but it is spot on! The rest of the cast are average - none of them stand out but they just about manage to do what the material requires of them (which ain't much).

Overall this film has just about enough laughs to justify watching, but if you haven't seen the crop of teen slashers made around the time then you'll often not get the jokes.  Sadly though, it is more miss than hit (with some crude `cum'n'dick' jokes being more unpleasant than funny).

score /10

bob the moo 19 January 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0603646/