Potty humor, lazy pop culture references, and a “Jackass” trailer playing before the movie started? Welcome back, 2003!

“Scary Movie” is the sixth installment of the famous parody franchise, and features the return of the Wayans brothers after being absent from the series they created for the past four films. In the film, Cindy and Brenda (Anna Faris and Regina Hall, also returning after not starring in the fifth film) must escape the return of the Ghostface killer from the original film. Michael Tiddes directs as Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Olivia Rose Keegan also star.

I have a mixed relationship with the “Scary Movie” franchise. Like a lot of Millenials I watched the original film at sleepovers as a too-young kid, but otherwise only ever saw the fourth film (which I thought was hilarious since I was a teenage boy, the true demo of these things). I’ve since seen the whole series a few times, and think that each film (outside 5) has some redeeming qualities, but potty humor isn’t really my cup of tea. Still, I was looking forward to the sixth film for nostalgia purposes, and while the end results aren’t hilarious (or even that funny), it is nice to have the original gang back together.

Anna Faris and Regina Hall’s dumb chemistry have always been the highlight of these films, and they pick up as if there wasn’t even a 20 year gap since we last saw them together. Seeing Hall go from a somber (deceptively scene-stealing) performance in “One Battle After Another” to this is certainly a 180, but you can tell she’s having fun. Faris does her famous ditzy blonde routine and it gets some laughs, and I was actually impressed by the casting of Olivia Rose Keegan as her daughter; her look and mannerisms are very Faris-esque.

The plot largely mirrors “Scream 5,” and I appreciated them bothering to have a plot at all (the fourth and fifth films are pretty much just cutaway gags like an episode of “Family Guy”). In true “Scary Movie” fashion some of the horror films they choose to parody are clever, some are lazy “hey, remember that thing from this movie??,” but it is impressive how quickly they were able to pump out some of the pop culture references (there’s a joke about “One Battle” and the Oscars, so they had to have shot the bit over the last two months).

The film is never laugh-out-loud funny, but I did chuckle a handful of times and blew air out of my nose on several occasions. Like I said, these sorts of jokes aren’t really my thing, they try and go back to jokes that are intentionally offensive, taking aim at race, sexism, and other “cancelled” -isms, and more often than not it just comes off like old man yells at clouds/”look how edgy we are” than anything. That being said, every now and then there will be a genuinely clever line that hits (the killer stabs a poster and the drawing on it screams in pain), and it’s amusing how many shots the Wayans take at the “Scary Movie” sequels that they weren’t involved with, and even knock their fellow cast members who did star in them. Ghostface’s reveal and motivation here are also both unironically better than that of “Scream 7’s,” and the climax is hands-down the highlight of the film.

“Scary Movie” aka “Scary Movie 6” (hate that the studio did the “drop the number from the legacy sequel” thing like with “Halloween,” “Scream,” and “Candyman”) isn’t really a film we needed, nor does it really serve any purpose besides the Wayans getting to dust off some material they wrote 20 years ago before getting fired from the franchise. I will always champion seeing a studio comedy in theaters, and there are a few amusing bits and moments of 2000s nostalgia throughout. I wish this could have been a hilarious surprise like last year’s “Naked Gun,” but sometimes swinging at the low-hanging fruit is all you can ask from a film.

Critics Rating: 5/10