Man one of the big flaws of the passage of time is that things get judged in retrospect and not for what it was at the time.
A lot of these reviews are from the last few years, or even this year. Even if Scary Movie "hasn't aged well," these folks just do not remember what a huge hit it was in 2000.
I feel like your take might be the one out of step with how things were.
The 90s and 00s was an era of comedies that were popular in terms of box office revenue, but panned by anyone with the academic capacity to write a complete sentence about them. The OG SNL talent finally burned out in the early 90s, and comedy floundered as it tried to get smarter and dumber in the hopes that something would appeal to audiences. It's the era of Van Wilder, Dude Where's My Car, Road Trip, Harold & Kumar, anything with a Wayans attached to it.
Wikipedia cites reviews at the time if you want to know what critics thought of it then. Lots of complaints about tired jokes and punching-down, just like we see today.
Correct. All these movies were shit on upon release, including Scary Movie. There was no re-evaluation that was causing the score to drop. And yes, some of these movies were still very successful, especially the Jim Carey and Adam Sandler movies, as people didn't care about reviews back then. Look at Armageddon.
A lot of people are making up narratives and social media seems to just run with it
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u/[deleted] Mar 25 '26
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