Grade: C

Verdict: More boos-and-body-fluid yucks from the Wayans brothers.

Details: Starring Anna Faris, Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans. Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. Rated R. One hour, 23 min.

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Review: With "Scary Movie 2," the Wayans Brothers play by the old rule: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Or: if it wasn't that good to begin with, don't bother making it better.

Get ready for another round of raunch and gross-out jokes strung together in a parody of horror films. While last summer's original focused on the "Scream" series, the sequel is a smorgasbord. It makes fun of "The Haunting," "Amityville Horror," "The Legend of Hell House," "Poltergeist," "Hannibal" and - oh, why not - "Twister," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," "Charlie's Angels" and even "Dude, Where's My Car?" Oh, there's a "Weakest Link" joke, too. This is less a movie than a movie-trivia game.

"The Exorcist" gets us going, with Veronica Cartwright doing her best Ellen Burstyn impression, and Natasha Lyonne as a Reagan stand-in, peeing on the floor. It's the first of nonstop bodily eruptions. Within minutes, James Woods' priest has a groaner of a bowel movement and gets drenched in pea-soup puke. This is the part Marlon Brando originally took, but bowed out of, claiming illness. I figure he finally read the script.

Most of "SM2" spins out at Hell House, where a sinister professor (Tim Curry) has assembled a group of students for a weekend of paranormal study. Returning are good girl Cindy (Anna Faris), pothead Shorty (Marlon Wayans) and Ray (Shawn Wayans), who brings his girlfriend Brenda (the very funny Regina Hall).

The movie has flashes of topical wit. But mostly you get a sense of the Wayans' brothers (including Craig) and the four other screenwriters trying to top each other's gross-outs. The cast includes an obscenity spouting parrot that projectile-defecates against the wall; he's the ideal mascot for the movie.

The movie has good-sport Tori Spelling having a sexual encounter with a ghost that satirizes the death-on-the-ceiling scene of "Nightmare on Elm Street." David Cross has some good bits as a paraplegic research assistant who may be a little too resistant to accepting help from others. And Faris and screen beau Christopher Masterson put a memorably naughty twist to the "never let go" scene from "Titanic." There's also Chris Elliott as the filthy caretaker of Hell House, a caretaker whose grotesque, crippled left hand is meant to be a running joke but is more like a creeping annoyance.

One problem with "SM2" is the difficulty of mocking movies that were bad enough to be self-parodies themselves (in particular "The Haunting" and "Hollow Man"). Director Keenen Ivory Wayans and his brothers don't seem to have funneled any of their "Scary Movie" profits into its sequel. The sets are cheap, and the movie often looks crummy. And nobody seems to have bothered about continuity. One moment, three characters are dripping in vomit, the next second they're clean and dry. Or the piece of paper someone tapes to another person's back disappears a second later.

Yeah, I know, this isn't art. But the jokes aren't always good enough to keep us from noticing the sloppy work.

The slogan for "Scary Movie" was "No mercy. No shame. No sequel." Well, they broke their promise - not because there was still plenty of material ripe for parody, but because of the money the first one made. Since this one will probably cash in at the box office, too, I wonder what the Wayans will goof on in "SM3?" They should go after a really scary movie. Like "Moulin Rouge." Or "Driven." Or "Tomb Raider."

— Steve Murray, Cox News Service