FORTUNATELY for the Wayan brothers an awful lot of the audience that went to see Scream found it genuinely scary and much of the ironic lampooning was lost on them, writes Richard King.

I'm sure that Shawn, Marlon and Keenan were well aware of this before embarking on the script for Scary Movie. That's why, for the most part, this spoof of a spoof actually works. OK so it's a little uneven and some of the gags fall absolutely flat but the gags that work (and there are plenty) are of truly laugh out loud proportions.

Basically Scary Movie follows the plot of Scream almost scene for scene, beginning with a hilarious cameo by Carmen Electra in the Drew Barrymore role, which is enough to put anyone off having breast enhancements.

The killer, Ghost Face, is pretty much as he is in Scream (the most non-scary stalker and slasher in movie history methinks) with his sarcasm and clumsiness taken to another level. He pursues heroine Cindy Campbell and her teenage friends, alternatively wielding a knife and a hook to dispatch them in various bizarre fashions. The best jokes include a spot-on skit on I Know What You Did Last Summer's motor accident scene and the most bizarre method of stabbing someone to death ever to grace the big screen (can't say more in a family paper, sorry).

There are also spoofs of The Exorcist, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project and The Usual Suspects, the latter providing one of the best endings for a comedy I've seen in a long time.

All in all it is pretty tasteless, so if your politically correct stay at home. However if you fancy a good laugh go see for yourself. You're guaranteed at least that. Not quite the Airplane of Horror we'd like but then again by no means Spaceballs either.

Scary Movie has more highs than lows and is destined to become a huge cult favourite -- to be honest I enjoyed it more than its source material!