Courteney Cox and David Arquette Neve Campbell Scott Foley and Parker Posey Jenny McCarthy Photos : Courtesy of Dimension Films

By David Tepper NEW YORK, 21 March 2000 - What a letdown. Fans of Scream and Scream 2 were eager to see the third part of the trilogy, hoping to catch up with old friends from the previous two films. How was Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) dealing with adult life? Had former deputy Dewey Riley (David Arquette) finally gotten some confidence and competence? Did Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox Arquette) finally get a conscience? This trilogy has frequently compared itself with Star Wars (The Phantom Menace excepted). An audacious conceit, perhaps, but one which critics and audiences seemed willing to go along with in Scream's first two outings - as long as they delivered gore, plot, humor, and a modicum of social commentary in the correct proportions. The third in the series devotes so much of its energy to an elaborate ex post facto backstory that none is left over for finishing off the trilogy's present. (The Star Wars films could get away with Darth Vader's suddenly being Luke's father; nobody, frankly, cares what Sidney's mother was doing before she was born, so the whole backstory feels like a transparent ploy to get a shocking revelation into the movie somehow.) The rest of the movie mechanically follows the official series checklist. (Boyfriend and girlfriend die in the opening ten minutes - check! Threatening cell-phone calls - check! Pre-fab victims stalked and dispatched - check!) Even the celebrity cameos and pop-culture references smeared throughout are pure formula ("It's Princess Leia! And look, there's Silent Bob from Clerks!"). The freshness that made the original so captivating is gone. Even worse, there is nothing remotely shocking in this movie. Scream had the audacity to kill off its ostensible star in the first fifteen minutes, and allowed one character to talk to his own actor when he said, "Look behind you, Jamie, behind you." Scream 2 gave us a chilling modern-day Kitty Genovese in a movie theater full of kids too desensitized and jaded by media violence to recognize an actual murder carried out before their eyes. Scream 3, by comparison, has an explosion that was fresh when used on 1970's cop shows. Not quite the same. After seeing Sidney and Dewey and Gale beginning to grow in parts one and two, it's a bit of a disappointing to see Gale channelling Morticia Addams while Dewey goes Hollywood and hangs out with bratty actor types. Sidney wisely decides to cloister herself in an isolated farm compound until halfway through the movie, but that means she becomes far less significant to the narrative. While Ms. Campbell turns in a wrenching performance, wrenching is more or less routine for her - her day job is portraying Julia Salinger on Party of Five, a young woman to whom nothing good ever happens. None of these three characters is allowed to develop. The casting director might as well have used cardboard cutouts of the actors and saved the production company their salaries. The rest of the cast have parts as the various actors and crew in Stab 3, the movie-within-a-movie of Scream 3. Felicity's Scott Foley plays director Roman Bridger, with Parker Posey (The House of Yes) chewing scenery as Jennifer, the actress playing Gale in Stab 3. Rounding out the cast are Jenny McCarthy as ditzy blonde actress Sarah Darling, Matt Keeslar as the actor portraying Dewey, and Emily Mortimer as the actress portraying Sidney. The situation presents ample opportunities for people to interact with their portrayers, but sadly, writer Ehren Kruger never realizes this potential. Who to blame? Director Wes Craven? He did create an analogous scenario in Wes Craven's New Nighmare, where he had horror actors play themselves and be gradually taken over by the characters they made famous in the Nightmare series. Maybe he just couldn't be bothered, although it is odd that a former philosophy professor wouldn't jump at the chance to explore the kinds of questions this film raises. (With the release of true-crime movies like Boys Don't Cry, it would be very timely to ask what an actor might owe to the real person he or she recreates on screen; this film never even bothers to consider the issue.) Hold Craven for further questioning. Blame the actors? Not really. The cast is uneven at best, but they do the best they can in a thankless job. Two-thirds of them - and everybody knows exactly which two thirds - are just fodder for the killer's knife. (Why bother building them up, someone must have reasoned, when they'll be gone before the final reel starts?) Ms. McCarthy in particular seems to despair ever making anything out of her character, and just hopes that perhaps having a blonde ditz play a blonde ditz will somehow be seen as the height of satire (when really it's just an apt bit of casting). Even the actor who wears the Ghostface robe gives a lackluster performance. Every murder but one is done with a knife, and the mask itself seems to convey boredom with the whole business, as if it is just hankering to be let loose with a chainsaw and a machete as in splatter films of yore. The one standout is Ms. Posey as the vain, frenetic Jennifer portraying the Gale Weathers from the first Scream. The audience gets to see the Scream 1 Gale and the Scream 3 Gale side by side; Ms. Posey and Ms. Cox Arquette bounce off each other well, but since the trilogy is all about Sidney, Ms. Mortimer and Ms. Campbell ought to have gotten the same treatment. So most of the blame should probably lie squarely at the feet of writer Ehren Kruger, who took over from Kevin Williamson of the first two Scream movies. He has good ideas but fails to follow through with character continuity, plot, or logic. This weakness undermined his earlier Arlington Road and the current Reindeer Games as well; Kruger seems to write around one fantastic scene and ignores the niceties of everything else. Having Sidney run desperately through a movie set of her former house does play up the differences between Hollywood and the rest of the world nicely; but following up that scene with an extended Keystone Kops chase through an old mansion shows that Kruger is limited to one original idea per script. The bottom line: If you have it in your head to see this movie, you will have more fun inviting your friends over to play Clue and splash red food coloring all over everything. Culturekiosque gives this mediocre followup two stars.

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