The Wayans brothers have taken one step closer to becoming THE satirical parody comedians of the single-digit decade — for better or for worse. In their new film, “Scary Movie,” director Keenen Ivory Wayans, along with scribe siblings Shawn and Marlon, have done what would have seemed pointless and jejune in the 1990s: making a parody of parody movie “Scream.”

“Scream” and its sequels were surprisingly original for horror films — that was the catch. By embracing rather than abandoning the common elements of the teen horror genre, “Scream” managed to create a self-parody horror film that was truly unique, sexy, hip and post-modern.

Now the Wayans come along to make fun of a genre that already made fun of itself. Not terribly clever or original, but then the Wayans are the masters of the potty mouth, the fart joke and the outrageously offensive stereotype.

“Scary Movie” is not terribly original; in fact, the title itself was actually the working title for “Scream.” But on some instinctual level, this film seems to work sporadically.

The “Scream” machine was all about parody, but it still managed to spawn a genre of teen horror flicks that had all the hip sexiness with none of the parody. So in some ways, this parody is legitimate.

“Scary Movie” bears little explaining in the plot department; it is basically “Scream” with a few elements of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” thrown in just for the few scenes of that film that are worth making fun of.

On top of these two flicks, we get a mish-mash of one-off bits from “The Blair Witch Project,” “American Pie,” “Sixth Sense,” “The Usual Suspects” and “The Matrix.” Talk about disjointed.

These scenes make less sense than the rest of the film since the movies they take the time to riff on are not even in the same genre as the films primarily being mocked. It is like watching Mel Brooks’ “High Anxiety” and getting a mouthful of “Spaceballs” for no good reason.

It makes no sense except that it is a shotgun blast at recent movies that the brothers obviously thought could not be passed up. Some could have and should have been passed on for the sake of presenting a parody with some internal logic to it. A scene imitating the slow-motion, GAP commercial fight scenes from “The Matrix” wasn’t even funny, let alone original.

Cheri Oteri’s “Blair Witch scene” as ruthless reporter Gail Hailstorm scene was the cheapest possible shot at last summer’s most original horror offering: a close-up shot of snot streaming from Oteri’s nose as she confesses into her video camera.

The opening scene in “Scary Movie” worked very well. It is a quick rehash of Drew Barrymore’s tense and suspenseful opening scene in “Scream” with Carmen Electra filling out the role.

She is harassed via telephone by an unseen stalker and gives us the first of four fart/poop jokes of the film. “What was that?” asked the stalker. “I just farted. Sorry, I didn’t think you could hear that,” Electra responded. The audience seemed to enjoy it, but then most of them appeared to be a year or two from graduating high school.

From there, Electra’s character runs for her life shedding clothing and breast implants on the way. It is the funniest five minutes of the film.

The rest of the movie is largely what you would expect. People start dying in various and sundry ways meant to amuse, and some do.

“Scary Movie,” in spite of being intellectually pointless, mindless mockery, is actually surprisingly funny in places. This is due largely to the cast, most of whom were probably on the short list for “Scream,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and all the many sequels. They could quite easily have been passed over for those “serious” roles when asked to mock their peers.

Anna Faris (“Lover’s Lane,” “Eden”) plays Cindy Campbell, Sidney Prescott and Neve Campbell’s foil in this farce. Like Leslie Nielsen in “The Naked Gun,” she sells us on the comedy by rarely letting on that this is a comedy. The rest of the film does not fare so well.

“Scary Movie” makes too many self-conscious remarks about its being a movie itself. “If this were a movie, I would probably be played by Jennifer Love-Huge Tits.” “Yeah, and guys in their late 20s and early 30s would play us.” Ha ha ha. We knew this was a parody going into it, no need to draw attention to the obvious.

The best parody makes you forget that what you are watching is parody, and “Scary Movie” never does that. The movie doesn’t have so much of a plot as it does a series of scenes in which the characters perform sketch comedy. This adds a start and stop feeling to the whole movie. It’s like riding shotgun with somebody who keeps one foot on the gas and the other foot on the break.

The fart jokes in this movie got their share of the laughs, but that doesn’t justify using the lowest form of humor in the known universe over and over again. Noises from our butts are amusing because they underscore man’s ultimate frailty.

Fart jokes signify that no matter our status or dignity, we all succumb to the frailty of our bodies in the end. And when they smell heinous, it just makes it all the more significant and funny. Now let’s get over it and do some quality comedy, OK?

“Scary Movie” is worth a trip to the theater if you are in a braindead mood, but catch the matinee to save yourself the self-loathing of paying full price for this uneven, low-brow spectacle.

Greg Jerrett is a graduate student in English from Council Bluffs. He is opinion editor of the Daily.