Scary for all the wrong reasons

Turning over the director's chair to David Zucker for the third installment of the Scary Movie series might have been the one good idea Keenan Ivory Wayans had when conceiving this movie.\nAs director of such parody greats as Airplane!, Naked Gun and even BASEketball, Zucker's credentials show he knows a good parody movie when he sees one. But unfortunately, somewhere along the way there was a mix-up. This movie is …well, horrible. But I laughed. Ashamedly.\nThe first Scary Movie was by far the best, as is with many first movies in a parody series. But just as with those, an audience can only take so many of the same movies with the same jokes and the same premise. Though Scary Movie 4 is already in pre-production, it might be time for Shawn and Keenan Ivory to pack it up with this one.\nSet on parodying the most recent "scary" movies of years past, Scary Movie 3's plot (if you want to call it that) is based on The Ring while bringing in other "scary" movies. \nCindy (Anna Faris) is all grown up and a news anchorwoman at the local TV station. She has a nephew that can tell the future and an uncanny knack for getting herself into stupid situations with stupid people who end up dying. Enter farmer Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen), his faithful rapper-brother George (Simon Rex) and the mysterious crop circles that have formed in their corn -- Signs anyone? Cindy does an investigative report on them, and the story takes off from there. \nAfter that, her friend Brenda (Regina Hall) confides in her that she has seen a tape and someone called and told she only had seven days to live -- The Ring, everybody.\nIs there a connection? One would think not, but somehow the Wayans brothers bring them together. Intermix unnecessary parodies of 8 Mile and The Matrix, (though those segments definitely had the best cameos, everyone from Fat Joe to Queen Latifah and George Carlin) horrible acting and the usual camera tricks (thank God for no slow-motion fight scenes this time, though), it is basically 75 minutes of stupid, violent, sexual and politically incorrect jokes. \nFrom bringing in the whole Catholic-priests-being-pedophiles thing to making jokes about Asians' driving, Scary Movie 3 is definitely scary, just not for the right reasons.\nBut just as the two Scary Movies made audiences laugh, Scary Movie 3 will do the same.