Image courtesy of www.impawards.com
Director :
David Zucker
Cast :
Anna Faris……….Cindy Campbell
Regina Hall……….Brenda Meeks
Craig Bierko……….Tom Ryan
Simon Rex……….George
Despite being perhaps the least funny comedy franchise that has ever existed, Scary Movie and its sequels still manage to kick around. It’s an easy formula: find a bunch of successful movies, make some obvious jokes and insert slapstick humor, throw in some relatively unknown actors and sauté it over a modest budget and a monetary gain will be had. That’s the only reason why Scary Movie 4 was made, as it lacks any sort of creative or imaginative spark to it.
To try and describe the plot or story in any sort of detail would be nearly impossible , but the movie follows the story arc of 2005 smash hit War of the Worlds meshed with some sanitized horror spoofing featuring Saw and The Grudge. Throw in another 10 or so current pop culture references that’s Scary Movie 4 in a nutshell: references to other movies and other things.
There’s no coherence to the movie to start with, as it follows a broad story arc of plot followed with gags unrelated to the plot. Think Family Guy, except with more easily identifiable references. The rapid-fire gag formula from the first film is also present, as there’s an insane amount of attempts at humor that the film doesn’t have a point where you can afford to stop laughing. Well, that’s taking into consideration laughing in the first place.
And that would be very hard to do, as the film has maybe 10% of its jokes that actually are funny. The film franchise seems to be trying to skewer certain subjects and films but doesn’t quite reach the level of satire that is intended. Seeing 80 year old Leslie Nielsen in his birthday suit, and the requisite gags resulting from it, just isn’t funny at all. It’s a lazy and cheap gimmick to try and produce a laugh. Blame it on poor writing or the subject material but someone like David Zucker is normally much better than being attached to a film that is as bad as this one (or the other movie in the franchise he directed, Scary Movie 3).
Zucker, who has the Naked Gun franchise and Airplane! among his directorial efforts, seems to have put this one on neutral. There isn’t an ounce of originality to be found, as the sorts of gags that are attempted aren’t that funny or are transparent. Zucker tries his best, as the principles of the cast from the previous movies are all back, and he does some things shockingly well. His cinematography is solid and the film is well-edited to go with some good special effects work.
The cast is also partly enjoyable to watch; while the material they are working with is relatively bad, they are at least going blatantly over the top and hamming it up as actors to try and compensate. Anna Farris and Regina Hall have been in all four of the films and at least aren’t taking this seriously; the humor is dumb and it’s easy to see they’re not going to try and make it into something it isn’t. The rest of the cast, including cameos by NBA superstar Shaquille O’Neal, boxing legend Mike Tyson and TV’s Dr. Phil, all seem to at least know that this isn’t Shakespearean material in any degree and just run with it.
| CATEGORY | SCORE |
| STORY | 2 / 10 |
| ACTING | 5 / 10 |
| LOOK/FEEL | 3 / 10 |
| ORIGINALITY | 0 / 10 |
| ENTERTAINMENT VALUE | 1 / 10 |
