MUCH as Gazza fell from the love of this footballing nation to a backwater team in China, so it's been depressing watching Charlie Sheen flush away the talent promised in the mid 80s.

His inspired portrayal of a young soldier in the Nam classic Platoon long forgotten, he's now trying to stay poker-faced in this shameless spoof.

The absurdity of its plot, mostly ripped off from two commendable films, doesn't disappoint - a TV reporter links crop circles and an alien invasion (Signs) with a mysterious video tape that kills a week after watching it (The Ring).

Sheen is a former priest and, together with a clairvoyant and odd-faced nephew of Campbell, and Leslie Nielsen as the president, they try to save the world.

Throw in a load of skits about a white rapper (Eight Ball), The Matrix series and Michael Jackson, and the result really is frightening.

Idiotic, puerile and heavy on unimaginative slapstick and innuendo, Scary Movie 3 brings a few good hoots and moves very quickly, but it lacks the spike and surrealness of Airplane and Naked Gun, also directed by David Zucker.

That said, TV reporter Cindy Campbell (Anna Farris) shows great comic timing in enough rib-racking moments to save this daft outing from being too dull.

It works because, like its predecessors, noone will expect much beyond a forgettable foray into jiggling boobs, daft exchanges and characters getting smacked round the head.

Still, I've just remembered a particularly tasteless funeral scene, and I'm laughing.....