Review: The new 'Scary Movie' is cringey, crass and salvaged only by its devoted cast

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Call “Scary Movie” lazy, dumb and offensive.It would enthusiastically agree.

The lowbrow horror parody thrives on shtick about weed, race and genitalia.The only thing that scares it is high expectations.But amid the rampant stupidity of the first “Scary Movie,” released in 2000, original director Keenen Ivory Wayans discovered two major talents: Regina Hall and Anna Faris.

As heroines Brenda and Cindy, respectively, Hall and Faris were daffy, dopey and committed.Alongside a cast of Playmates (Carmen Electra, Shannon Elizabeth) and family members (Wayans brothers Marlon and Shawn), they played stupid like Shakespeare.

In two decades since, both gave up the Ghostface to do better things: Hall in “Girls Trip” and “One Battle After Another,” and Faris in “Smiley Face” and “The House Bunny.” (Frankly, Faris deserves to be doing more.) If a sixth “Scary Movie” is going to lure them back for what the ensemble openly frets is a rebooquel — as in a reboot-sequel, here pronounced “re-booty call” — it better be good.Fine, good is a stretch.The latest “Scary Movie,” which simply recycles the title “Scary Movie,” is as lazy, dumb and offensive as the others.

But Hall and Faris, now playing the dotty mothers of the next generation of victims, are hilarious, romping about like their Brenda and Cindy have clearly been knocked on the head too often.(Brenda, fans of the franchise know, has technically already died twice.) I laughed 10 times, which makes this “Scary Movie” the best of the bunch — a pallid compliment.Directing duties have shuffled to Michael Tiddes, a longtime Wayans collaborator, who gets gutsy performances from three of this entry’s newbies: Olivia Rose Keegan and Savannah Lee Nassif as Cindy’s estranged daughters, a pill-popper and a Wednesday Addams clone, and Ruby Snowber, maximizing every second of her feature debut as a...