keenen ivory wayans Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Review: Dance Flick
Filed under: Comedy », New Releases », Paramount », Theatrical Reviews », New in Theaters »
Keenen Ivory Wayans' nephew Damien makes his feature directorial debut with Dance Flick, the latest from a comedy factory even bigger and more confusing than Judd Apatow's. Let's see if I can get this straight. Keenen and his brother Damon Wayans started to break into showbiz in the early 1980s (apparently with some help from Eddie Murphy). Then Keenen wrote and directed the very funny blaxploitation spoof I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988), which featured roles for many of his siblings, plus one for a young Chris Rock. Then he created the terrific TV show "In Living Color" (1990), which, among its other accomplishments, boosted Jim Carrey's career. There were some other attempts at movies, most embarrassingly White Chicks (2004) and Little Man (2006), but their real bread and butter seemed to come from Sucka-like spoofs and parodies, starting with Scary Movie (2000).
I like that movie, and even its first two sequels have some memorable moments, but those films also inadvertently unleashed upon the world the screenwriting/directing team of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. Their creations Date Movie (2004), Epic Movie (2006), Meet the Spartans (2008) and Disaster Movie (2008) somehow made lots of money while being universally despised. (Don't ask me how Superhero Movie fits into this mix.) Fortunately Friedberg and Seltzer have nothing to do with Dance Flick, though it would be easy to make that mistake. Rather, no less than five Wayanses worked on the screenplay for this: Keenen, his brothers Shawn and Marlon, his cousin Craig and nephew Damien Wayans. And ten Wayanes appear in the acting credits. I can only imagine that the read-throughs and story conferences were funnier than the movie.
Review: Scary Movie 4 -- Rob's Take
Filed under: Comedy », New Releases », New in Theaters », The Weinstein Co. », Remakes and Sequels »
A good parody is hard to spin beyond the here and now. Take "Weird Al" Yankovic, for example. The pop-music jokester has put out 11 regular albums since 1983, when the accordian-playing nice guy's spoof of The Knack's "My Sharona" (titled "My Bologna" and recorded in the men's room of his college radio station) started his career as a musician, comedic icon and food fetishist when it blew up on The Dr. Demento Show. However, every hilarious and unforgettable cut like "Eat It", "Like A Surgeon" and "Smells Like Nirvana" that hit was matched by fade-away tracks like the New Kids jape "The White Stuff" (an ode to Oreos), the Rocky III goof "Theme From Rocky XIII (The Rye Or The Kaiser)" or the misjudgment "Taco Grande" (a riff on Latin rough-boy Gerardo's only hit, "Rico Suave"). The secret to a successful parody is complex, involving a careful balance of picking a song that is big enough, worthy of a good-natured dressing down and most important, funny. The same is true with movies, and the latest in the popular Scary Movie series is a great example of what can go right and wrong with such an attempt.
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