Scary Movie 3

Reviewed by EWAN McDONALD

Pop will eat itself, according to the 80s' band, and if these two examples of pop culture are anything to go by, it'll be junk food and it'll repeat on you.

Not that there's anything wrong with a good spoof or a trashy horror flick: the hilarious Airplane and the wonderfully overwrought Psycho, for examples.

SM3 is the third and hopefully last in a franchise that set out to extract the proverbial from teen-scream melodramas such as Scream and I Know What You Did and did it rather well.

Realising that the series was running out of puff, the producers turned to David Zucker, whose track record included Airplane and the big- and small-screen Naked Gun send-ups. Zucker turned up with his directing shoes on and a couple of trusty sidekicks, Leslie Nielsen and Charlie Sheen.

There's a pretence at a storyline, mainly to keep the sight gags and one-liners humming: ditzy reporter Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) is trying to track down the truth about a videotape that kills its viewers and the possibility of an alien invasion.

Along the way she will meet assorted idiots representing the history of the horror movie since the millennium.

So we start from those send-ups of The Ring and Signs and amble through The Matrix, The Sixth Sense and and since that's a relatively short time-frame it will divert into cultural icons — Eminem, or rather his biopic, 8 Mile; Michael Jackson, who in a neatly ironic move has sued over the depiction of his well-known fondness for the company of children; even American Idol, though I'm darned if I know how anyone could send that up, given the job it does on itself.

Expect more famous, almost famous and wannabe famous faces than you'd get in the average issue of Who Weekly, such as Denise Richards, Jenny McCarthy, Pamela Anderson, Queen Latifah, Macy Gray, George Carlin, Ja Rule.

Just don't expect too many laughs.

The idea, and the man who started out with Kentucky Fried Movie, feel past their use-by date.

The DVD side of the operation didn't have that much to work with, since the project was pretty much made up as Zucker and Co went along.

There are the usual commentary tracks, with director, producer and writers, 10 deleted scenes, a making of with Anna Faris, out-takes and bloopers, and an alternate ending.

DVD, video rental, out now