In much of her work but in particular the Scary Movie franchise, Regina Hall is comfortably the funniest woman of 21st century cinema. In those horror spoofs, she specialises in immaculately smart-stupid, stupid-smart character work, clown by way of a mad scientist. To call her loud on-screen feels disrespectful. Outrageous, even more so. Think of her prime skillset as more like a kind of avant-garde insanity, built upon line readings (“Cindy, the TV’s leaking”; “Cindy, this is a skeleton! This is bones!”) that have been made immortal by memes, TikToks and YouTube compilations. I find Hall hilarious. Does she?
“Hmm!” she exclaims, down the phone from her current base in New Jersey, where she’s been filming. “I know that my friends are funny. I have a funny family for sure.”
