SCARY MOVIE 4 A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2006 David N. Butterworth
** (out of ****)
Scarier than the first, funnier than the second, and stupider than the third, the fourth installment of the "Scary Movie" franchise (called, not surprisingly, "Scary Movie 4") continues to do what it does best: poke fun at the cream of Hollywood's crop. That's not to say that "SM4" is particularly good or anything, but the series has somehow created a comfortable niche for itself by lampooning major motion pictures, from "Brokeback Mountain" to "Million Dollar Baby" to just about everything in between.
"'4" opens with a wry spoof of the horror flick "Saw," with a pair of unexpected celebrities finding themselves manacled in a dingy, dirty washroom with self-mutilation the only possible route to freedom. The film then takes up a couple of separate yet eventually linked story threads, one of which features Cindy Campbell (a returning Anna Faris), the bubbleheaded, accident-prone blonde of the previous three features, seeking work as a domestic caregiver. She's quickly assigned to the house of Mrs. Norris (a wasted Cloris Leachman), whose house turns out to hold a terrible, ghost-like secret (see: "The Grudge").
In her efforts to uncover the mystery of the creepy little "Japanese"-speaking dead boy who keeps popping up. Cindy and her sex-crazed friend Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall, also back) stumble upon a strange, cult-like community that possess a strange alliance with their mysterious, forest dwelling neighbors (see: M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village").
And a parallel story features Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko), a hapless and hopeless crane-operating Dad, trying to save his young daughter and teenage son from an invasion of alien Tr-iPods (see: "War of the Worlds"). Tom happens to live next door to Mrs. Norris, but it takes a couple of stray balls to Cindy's cranium before she and Tom become officially acquainted.
The scene is well set, therefore, for some crude sexual humor, as well as comic violence and PG-13 rated language. Unfortunately, director Jerry Zucker (who took over the reins from the Wayans Brothers; they produced the first and second entries in the series) as well as screenwriters Craig Mazin and Jim Abrahams rely too heavily on below-the-belt bodily humor that stifles much of the potential. (Zucker and Abrahams, together with Zucker's brother Jerry, were responsible for those rapid fire, yuck-a-minute spoofs of the late '70s/early '80s, among them "Airplane!," "Top Secret!," "Police Squad!," "The Naked Gun!," and other films ending in an exclamation point, so you'd be excused for expecting something a little more, well... sophisticated.)
I hadn't realized that Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker staple Leslie Nielsen was still alive but the boys affectionately trot him out (as President Harris) and strip him naked for posterity. Thanks guys. I really needed to see that.
There are plenty of laughs in the film, of course, and it looks good from a technical standpoint, but a lot of the lampooned blockbusters are easy targets, and "Scary Movie 4" so often takes the easy road (it should come as no surprise to anyone, let alone Ang Lee, that "Brokeback'" makes its token appearance).
Perhaps the point is that, when it comes to scary movies, nobody gets out alive.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
Got beef? Visit "La Movie Boeuf" online at http://members.dca.net/dnb
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