Popcorn Disabilities: We Need to Talk About Doofy
The disabled fake-out is an interesting trope, which the new Scary Movie completely forgot about.
Welcome to this installment of Popcorn Disability, the series looking at disability through the lens of pop culture.
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I saw the Scary Movie reboot last week and the Wayanses can thank my new puppy keeping me up and leaving me without the strength to actually review it. (Though, the movie's 26% on Rotten Tomatoes shows mine wouldn't have made things any better or worse.) While I had low expectations for the movie, I was interested after hearing that Dave Sheridan's Doofy was returning for the sequel.
If you don't remember the 2000s Scary Movie, the OG, Doofy was essentially the movie's reinterpretation of David Arquette's Dewey character from Scream. Here, Doofy is a police officer with IDD (intellectual and developmental disabilities) where the majority of the jokes come from him being utterly inept.....until the end. In a throwback to The Usual Suspects (1995), Doofy is revealed to be the killer all along and is actually not disabled. He strides off into the sunset, with reporter Gail Hailstorm (Cheri Oteri), with the true joke being on how everyone's gullibility (and, dare I say ableism?) allowed him to pull the wool over their eyes.
Now, if you've seen the trailers for the new Scary Movie, Doofy is still rocking his old police man's uniform, as well as the wild hair and mustache seen as fake in the film's finale. So, this installment of Popcorn Disabilities, I want to talk about Scary Movie, Doofy, and the disabled fake out.
