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The general rule of spoofs is that by the time a movie genre is ready for its piss-take, its popularity has definitely passed its peak. Mel Brooks put a well-timed boot into Westerns with Blazing Saddles, while Airplane! nailed the coffin shut on '70s disaster flicks. Scary Movie's spectacular US box-office run suggests that movie-goers have finally grown bored of jaded, self-aware teens who jeer at horror movie clichés and then get killed anyway.

The brainchild of the Wayans brothers - - Keenen directs, Shawn and Marlon star, and they all had a hand in the script - - Scary Movie blends the teens-in-peril plots of the Scream trilogy with I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel. It also takes a page straight out of the Farrelly brothers' play book, and is busting with raunchy, gross-out humour.

One of the features of mockery movies has always been their hit-and-miss nature, and Scary Movie has its share of feeble japes. But the unexpected, and cheering, bombshell is how many actually work, and how game the cast of young actors are to look like fools. Keenen Ivory Wayans keeps it all fleet-footed and light, while firing broadsides at, among others, The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project and The Sixth Sense.

As the teen horror genre limps to its final resting place, the Wayans brothers detonate a jolly comic blast over Scream and its brethren. The rude jokes just keep on coming, and the "teenage" cast milk them for all they're worth. A bloody good laugh.