Though the tag-line of Scary Movie promised "no mercy, no shame, no sequel", the original film's success made this hasty follow-up inevitable. Even by the 10-to-one ratio of dud to hit gags in the first film, this is a poor showing--cut back to under 80 minutes plus end credits, it barely manages three laughs in its entire running time, and a lot of the strained routines go beyond being unfunny into actual torture. It opens with a skit of The Exorcist as priest James Woods, taking over a role written for Marlon Brando, plays duelling vomit with Natasha Lyonne. Then, it turns into a redundant parody of the quite-bad-enough remake of The Haunting as returnees from the first film (Anna Faris, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Regina King) and some new blood (Tim Curry, Chris Elliott, Kimmy Robertson, Tori Spelling) take part in a paranormal investigation in an old haunted house, pestered by a foul-mouthed parrot, a kung-fu cat, a horny ghost, a giant marijuana plant, an evil puppet and pointless jibes at Charlie's Angels and Hannibal. Director Keenen Ivory Wayans, backed up by a parcel of credited scriptwriters (some not even related to him), demonstrates the now-familiar rule that the more Wayanses there are credited in a film the less amusing it is likely to be. On the DVD: Scary Movie 2 is a rare disc that allows the viewer to reconstruct what went wrong. There are about 40 minutes (half the running time of the feature!) of deleted or alternate scenes (including a better Sixth Sense-style ending, an elaborate What Lies Beneath bathtub sketch and other snippets that seem no worse than the jokes that did make it) and four rough behind-the-scenes featurettes, which reveal that James Woods improvised one of the very few actually funny moments in the film and that effects were designed for even more scenes that didn't make it into the cut. --Kim Newman
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