Ticket Stubs #37: Cheap Laughs

I realize I forgot to give you Ticketholding, Heromachining, Cover Charging, Parade-marching, Sound-tracking, flashbacking folks my stay tuned message at the end of the last Heroines Are Made, and Lord, I apologize. Let's join the pygmies down in New Guinea for some cheap laughs, straight FROM May 17, 2004 (SWAT Ticket #5: The Last Laugh)
This week on SWAT Ticket, Scary Movie sucks, Stuck on You is a high dose of conjoined comedy, and Tom Cruise earns the right to be Most Wanted.

First up is Scary Movie 3, a bad omen of all trilogies past and future. In SM3, a reporter, a wannabe rapper, a farmer/ex-clergyman, and a little boy who sees dead people fight invading aliens and a killer videotape while inadvertently knocking the living crap out of each other in what are supposed to be comedic exchanges but turn into undesirable and unwatchable hordes of gratuitous and excessively moronic violence. Among the more humorous moments are the parodies of 8 Mile, The Others, Signs, The Ring, Malibu's Most Wanted (an 8 Mile parody in its own right), Final Destination, The Matrix: Reloaded, The Sixth Sense, Michael Jackson, the church sex scandal, Simon Cowell, Fat Joe, and President (Harrison) Ford. The parodies were well concocted and well-cast (even Leslie Nielson as the President), but with all the broad slapstick, it's too immature for anyone to sit through and too violent for impressionable young minds.
F+ (I made up the grade to be generous)

Now for some real comedy! The Farrelly Brothers are back, doing their usual parody of physical and mental disabilities in Stuck on You. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear (thank God they didn't velcro Damon to Ben Affleck for the billionth time in the past two years. They got Good Will and stopped Hunting for a change) play conjoined twins with beautiful girlfriends and radically different career goals who want to be separated so they can each be their own man, but realize that they can't live without each other. Damon is a fast food chef with a perfect short order record and a hot hockey career, and Kinnear is a small-town stage actor who wants to go to Hollywood and make it big. The expected twin gimmicks are all there to keep Farrelly fans like myself satisfied, the cameos by Meryl Streep and Cher will keep the Queer Eye'd population in their seats, and the ending is sensible and heartfelt enough that older audiences will at least keep their eyes on the screen while backing slowly out the door.
B

Speaking of Matt Damon and Tom Cruise (both of whom have recently done films where they wear cybernetic exoskeletons) The future Edge of Tomorrow star gets a past review recycled for your reading pleasure next time, so stay tuned for more Ticket Stubs and heroines from my head.