In a way, it’s fitting that Lindsay Lohan is the star of (the first five minutes of) “Scary Movie 5.” This is a horror movie that’s really a supposed comedy; she’s a supposed comedy actress who’s actually scary. It’s lucky that people don’t often look at her face, because as the world’s most haggard 26-year-old, she kinda looks like someone who needs an exorcism.
Lohan and Charlie Sheen, who don’t appear in the rest of the movie, appear only in a brief opening scene as a couple about to make a sex tape while paranormal activity is occurring in the background. Fast forward through some dull sex jokes (a cat with its tail sticking up crawls under the sheets in Sheen’s crotch region) and “Benny Hill Show” theme music plays.
The main story, which lasts roughly an hour before the closing credits mercifully arrive: A young couple (Ashley Tisdale, Simon Rex) adopt his feral nieces and wind up re-enacting both “Paranormal” and Jessica Chastain’s “Mama,” which I guess is impressive since the latter movie came out only three months ago.
Not that the writers (“Naked Gun” veterans David Zucker and Pat Proft, who are out of comedy ammo) seem to have sweated the jokes. Put it this way, there’s a spoof of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” in which gorillas throw their feces at the wall to see if it sticks, and you can’t help wondering if this is actual documentary footage of the script meetings.
With its parodies of “Black Swan” (Heather Locklear plays a ballerina who gives birth while doing a split in the air; baby winds up in tuba) and “Inception” (which features a cameo by Mike Tyson that makes his appearance in “The Hangover” look like “Hamlet” by comparison), the fifth “Scary Movie” comes across like a series of variety-show sketches written in the elevator on the way up. Though I enjoyed the strangely whimsical scene in which, while everyone in the house is asleep, the pool-cleaning robots gain consciousness and invite all the machines in the neighborhood for a party. (They use their rubber hoses to snort white cleaning chemicals.)
Otherwise the gags are consistent: They’re miss-or-miss. The odd obsession with “Black Swan” (is this a movie that was seen by the middle schoolers at whom the “Scary”franchise is aimed?) leads to loads of repetitive scenes in a dance studio. There are sight gags about what ballerinas eat for lunch (a single Cheerio in one case; a huge pizza in another), Molly Shannon embarrasses herself stumbling around as a tutu-wearing performer who drinks a martini during a workout and one routine turns into a naughty pole-dance segment. In a “Cabin in the Woods” segment, college kids hack off their own limbs when a magic spell is recited and Snoop Dogg is spotted carrying around a spliff the size of a canoe.
The ongoing “Paranormal” spoof keeps circling back to mean-spirited jokes about a portly Latina housemaid who makes a stinky in a toilet scene and wears an overly revealing swimsuit. Also she beats a pinata, tries to run over her employer with a lawn mower and sleeps with her vacuum cleaner. Zucker and Proft: If the National Hispanic Media Coalition ever calls, pretend you’re not home.
Down at the bottom of the comedy barrel, where the slimy gray algae-like stuff lives: That’s where this script came from. If you must go to “Scary Movie 5,” be sure to bring an iPad with you. That way you can watch a better movie on it.