Scary Movie 4

April 15, 2006

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 83 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I love David Zucker’s movies but the problem with parodies is the hit and miss factor. You never know when a joke just won’t work and you will be sitting there wondering when this nightmare will end and the movie will get back to being funny. This unfortunately is a common occurrence in Zucker’s films and Scary Movie 4 is no exception. Zucker is a genius at what he does, so he always manages to pull you back in just when you get near the brink of walking out and demanding a refund. Airplane, Naked Gun, Top Secret… the list goes on all have one common thread. Serious genres in the film industry get turned on their ear, and whether they like it or not, they get to see how utterly ridiculous most of their major plot points really are, and we get to laugh at them for it.

Scary Movie 4 primarily chooses War of The Worlds, The Grudge, The Village, Saw, Brokeback Mountain and even Oscar winner Million Dollar Baby to rake over the coals this time around. If you have seen any of these films you already know how easy it would be to call shenanigans on some of the things we as movie goers get all ga-ga about from them, and the team of Zucker and Abrahams manage to pull it off for the most part masterfully.

The movie starts off with a parody of the 2004 hit ‘Saw’ that involves Shaq and Dr. Phil. Jigsaw has chained them to the floor and given them 2 minutes to get free or else they die. Just like the original Saw, the director scans the room showing you the trap, the exit and the painful solution that awaits his victims. The trap here is a room filled with deadly nerve gas; The exit is a syringe filled with antidote; and the solution is to throw a rock through a basketball hoop that will drop 2 saws from the ceiling… you know the rest. Shaq and Dr Phil are really good during this scene and the fact that Shaq can poke fun at his free throw skills is pretty darn funny in it’s own right.

Cindy (Faris) and Brenda (Hall) go on a journey to find the answer to stopping the invasion, using key plot points from The Grudge, The Village and Million Dollar Baby, while hero Tom Ryan (Bierko) brings to light the ridiculousness of War of the Worlds. Last but not least there is an ongoing subplot parodying Brokeback Mountain (we can only assume these jokes are parodies, we did not see it… nor will we) involving Anthony Anderson and DeRay Davis. Pretty funny stuff and I was entertained for almost the full 83 minutes… Almost being the key word here.

The movie is riddled with cameos from Carmen Electra and Chris Elliot to Leslie Nielson. Cloris Leachman and Charlie Sheen to Mike Tyson - And with the exception of the ending… a WAY, WAY overdone parody of the infamous Tom (I really am straight, I swear) Cruise on the Oprah (I’m still a fat heifer but I have good effects people) Winfrey’s show, everything worked. This segment could have been a deleted scene on the DVD or better still could have been left out completely. I hated it and it F’d up the entire flow, which dropped the score down to a solid three. I really wanted to give it 4 and the Shaq/Dr Phil scene alone should have gotten it 4, but crap is crap - Thus the 3.

The gags are overdone at times and most of them could have been 2 to 3 minutes shorter but overall I liked this movie. The one bad thing about this franchise is that it will probably never end because Hollywood will continue to produce crap that can be made fun of. Good thing Zucker will be here to capitalize on it.

Posted by J.C. Edwards | Filed Under 3 Stars, Anna Faris, Anthony Anderson, Carmen Electra, Comedy, Craig Bierko, PG-13, Regina Hall, Theatrical