The cinema spoof will never die

Given the 25 years it took brothers Marlon and Shawn Wayans to reclaim control of their “Scary Movie” franchise with the new, “rebooquel”-titled “Scary Movie” — the sixth overall film in the series — one would think the siblings had enough time to scare up some decent jokes, too. A quarter of a century is a long time, after all. And yet, the new “Scary Movie” is stuck somewhere between then and now, with one foot in the early-millennial absurdism that spawned the series’ most beloved gags, and the other planted way too firmly in quote-unquote edgy humor.

Early marketing for the film teased a movie in which “there were no safe spaces,” where “every line would be crossed.” (Never mind that a hacky, low-hanging joke about they/them pronouns, like the one in the film’s first trailer, is a line that’s been crossed so many times the chalk has faded.) “Scary Movie” would, apparently, be a return to the button-pushing, tasteless humor that defined a generation but was now outmoded by wokeness. Hear that, snowflakes? The Wayans brothers are coming for your triggers. 2016 is all about real comedy. Save your liberal crap for “The Mindy Project”!

Ah, shoot, that’s right: It’s 2026, and provoking people with inflammatory remarks is a billion-dollar industry. What a shame that no one told the Wayans that so “Scary Movie” could have a shot at actually being good. Though, it’s important to note that the “Scary Movie” franchise was never good, at least not exactly.

The series’ first film is its strongest, weaving together overarching parodies of “Scream” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” alongside brief send-ups of popular horror films. Though the sequels became progressively worse, each one has a handful of great situational gags — diamonds sparkling through manure recalling the finest, silliest bits in classic spoof films from the late 20th century. Maybe a spoof doesn’t have to be consistently funny or ideologically progressive to be enjoyable, and anyone who demands those things should just close the door and forget what they’ve seen. But you know what they say: When one door closes, a train is about to careen off the tracks and barrel right through it.

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Crashing into theaters alongside “Scary Movie” this weekend is “Stop! That! Train!,” a spoof that stylistically harkens back to Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker movies like “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” and lands about 50% more punchlines than its horror-skewering opponent. And though it’s also far from perfect, “Stop! That! Train!” shrewdly updates inane parodic humor for the contemporary age, understanding that inclusivity is easier to make funny than being an “equal opportunity offender,” as the Wayans put it.

But as strange as it may sound, “Scary Movie” and “Stop! That! Train!” aren’t competitors so much as they are complements, two parodies that hold each other up when the other starts to lag. Their simultaneous existence indicates a broader trend toward sheer, glorious stupidity that viewers crave when practically everything is either too polished and boring or wilfully obtuse. In a time when everyone — be it civilians, brands or celebrities — is hyper-conscious of how they come off, there’s a refreshing thoughtlessness to these films, a folly so proud and surprisingly well-crafted that it turns right back around to feel clever again. A spoof is only as successful as its dumbest joke, and these two films have plenty to choose from.

In all fairness, “Stop! That! Train!” is working with a home court advantage. Produced by the brilliant team behind “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — Randy Barbato, Fenton Bailey, Tom Campbell and RuPaul himself — “Stop! That! Train!” adapts the humor of the Emmy-winning reality show for the big screen. (A crash course for the unfamiliar: Put together the acronym spelled out by one of the show’s many catchphrases, “Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent.”) And if there’s anyone who can help translate that humor for audiences all over the country who might not watch “Drag Race,” it’s the man who directed John Travolta’s Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray,” Adam Shankman. With a healthy dose of RuPaul’s signature wit and enough drag queen-friendly lighting to combat Hollywood’s run of dimly lit features, the team revives the disaster spoof with stylish aplomb.

Set aboard a luxurious Glamazonian Express train, the film follows stewardesses Tess and DeeDee (“Drag Race” alums Ginger Minj and Jujubee) during their first day on the job after quitting their gigs at Stank Railways. Little do they and the rest of the train’s crew and passengers realize that their coach is headed straight for a wicked stormaganza that promises to blow the wigs right off their heads, Got2Be glue hairspray be damned.

The film rings loudly with its apparent elevator pitch — “What if ‘Airplane!’ was set on a runaway train staffed by drag queens and every passenger was either famous or gay-famous?” — but the sound is a pleasurable one. The worse the weather gets, the more delightfully moronic the film becomes. When RuPaul arrives as President Judy Gagwell, tasked with saving the train or seeing her approval ratings plummet, the script begins to sing . . . just before it sinks. RuPaul enters the fold and steals the show, and suddenly, none of the quips and bits can quite measure up to his delivery. But those are champagne problems, and on a Glamazonian Express, champagne is complimentary.

Even when “Stop! That! Train!” falters and the steel of the train tracks starts to shake things too severely, the film is put back on its course by its sheer joy. There’s an undeniably amiable — dare I say important — quality to a film like this hitting theaters now, when an entire subset of American politicians is devoted to pushing and passing anti-drag and transphobic legislation. The sheer existence of “Stop! That! Train!” is a statement more edgy than anything in “Scary Movie.”

Yet, the film pulls off its share of daft, button-pushing jokes, too. President Gagwell is haunted by the memory of a child she ran over with a train while serving in the Railforce, a fake division of the American armed forces. Raven-Symoné, who is not Jewish, appears to deliver one single line playing a Floridian television reporter named Shayna Gefilte-Manischewitz. These things are hilarious because screenwriters Christina Friel and Connor Wright clearly approached the script by trying to make everything legitimately funny, instead of assuming that provocation immediately equates to humor.

But a bigger comedic sin is the belief that viewers will automatically laugh just because they recognize a reference. “Scary Movie” spends the majority of its runtime making broad, humorless gestures at the kind of pop culture that’s been proliferating our lives and screens for the last six years, and thus, feels tired and trite. Jokes about Twitch streamers getting paid to do nothing were funnier the first 1,000 times you saw them somewhere, and even then, they weren’t worth more than a passing snicker. During a bit referencing “The Substance,” which is a ha-ha-funny poking at the accessibility of lip filler, there’s a patently horrible joke about the Epstein files that’s made significantly worse because it’s not just in poor taste, but also makes no sense.

Several “Scary Movie” scenes read like cobbled-together filler or late-period reshoots. But even the strongest sequences, like the opening scene where Teyana Taylor references her Oscar loss, filmed only a few months ago, can’t buoy those that flatline on arrival. Even more baffling is the shoddy editing. If the Wayans were able to slip in a joke about Taylor, why didn’t they cut a separate quip about horror never winning Oscars, when Amy Madigan won for “Weapons” the same night? At one point, Anna Faris jokes that the film can’t reference “It Follows” because that movie is too obscure. Yet, there’s a direct recreation of a shot from “It Follows” 15 minutes before.

What’s frustrating isn’t that the jokes are terrible. I mean, that’s disappointing too, but it’s not my primary complaint. What doesn’t compute with me is why the Wayans, who finally regained control of their franchise after the Weinstein brothers swiped it out from under them following “Scary Movie 2,” opted to focus on simple provocation over complex comedy. These jokes don’t even come off as ill-intentioned; they’re just not amusing.

The funniest moments in the “Scary Movie” franchise have nothing to do with the casual ableism, rapey implications or gross-out toilet humor proliferating the first five films, and everything to do with the smart character writing. When Brenda (Regina Hall), Cindy (Faris), Shorty (Marlon Wayans) or Ray (Shawn Wayans) landed a punchline, it was because their archetypal characters found themselves in ludicrous situations, played to extremes. Those are the bits that have carried the “Scary Movie” legacy into the present. No one’s rewatching “Scary Movie 2” because they’re dying to see James “Evil Incarnate” Woods play a lecherous priest named Father McFeely. They’re watching because they want to see Brenda say the skeleton looks like Calista Flockhart, or Cindy get KO’d by a black cat. Those scenes are perfect examples of how to make semi-provocative jabs at body shaming and animal violence funny.

As brilliant as the Wayans brothers can be, they seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s made “Scary Movie” last all these years. Sure, some immature viewers might have glommed onto the edgy comedy of yesteryear. But what people really loved was Faris and Hall, whose characters dominate the meme scene to this day. The film tries to make a tongue-in-cheek commentary about how the “Scream” reboot pushed Neve Campbell to the back burner and focused on a new group of teenagers. But a spoof is under no obligation to turn that one joke into a full narrative as it does by deferring to a younger cast, and only checking in with the franchise’s original players occasionally. The people want Brenda and Cindy, and I’d wager that a hefty chunk of the film’s $54 million opening weekend was from those who were curious about what those characters were up to, and what new GIFs and reaction videos they might produce.

Still, I laughed. Out loud, too, and more than a few times. Were those chuckles overpowered by groans and eye rolls? Definitely. But despite how truly bad — and I do mean bad — “Scary Movie” is, there’s something that remains enjoyable about it. When a joke hits, it hits hard. A spoof film, by nature, is always going to be a bit scrappy. They’re loaded with practical effects and jokes that cost thousands of dollars to produce for a five-second cutaway scene. There’s an odd bliss in that ingenuity, as if I were affected by how high-concept both “Scary Movie” and “Stop! That! Train!” manage to be, despite working with medium-sized budgets and scripts that range from pretty good to this-should-be-burnt.

Perfection has a great marketing team these days. Flawlessness is seen as attainable. But the cinema spoof still kicks dirt all over those concepts, even when it’s awful. Here, excellence is determined by how much fun you can have on set, how ridiculous you can be, and how you can make a joke so completely insipid that it circles back around to being funny again. Those attempts don’t always work, but in an era when everything is picked apart until there’s nothing left, there’s a power in total carefreeness. The fact that “Scary Movie” will almost certainly get a sequel, despite the abysmal reactions, is a great thing. That “Stop! That! Train!” is the first planned film in a “Drag Race” universe is even better. I’ll watch five more — hell, 10 more — of each, even if it’s just in pursuit of that one gut-busting laugh.