Is it Satire or Just Stupid?
Scary Movie 4 Tanks the Series
The idea of spoofing a movie, or genre, has been a time honored tradition for ages. For my money, no movie better typifies the sheer nonsensical spoof than the classic 1980 film Airplane!. It not only spoofed airplane disaster movies like Airport, it became a classic of comedy in its own right. Now director David Zucker (who directed Scary Movie 3 as well) is returning to horror for his comedy fodder in Scary Movie 4.
Written by: Craig Mazin & Jim Abrahams & Pat Proft
Starring: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart
Rated
(for
crude and sexual humor throughout, some comic violence and language)Running time: 83 min.
FilmGuru's Rating : 3 out of 10.
The "story" for this continuous series of sight gags and low-rent humor is rooted in the horror movie The Grudge and the sci-fi blockbuster War of the Worlds.
Anna Faris (who is one of the few stars to make it through all four films) returns as Cindy Campbell. This time Cindy looks decidedly like Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge. Instead of living in Japan, however, she is located in New York, next door to Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko). When the world comes under attack from alien invaders, she soon finds her friend Brenda (Regina Hall) and sets out to find the secret to stopping the alien invaders.
Granted, comedy is subjective. For me, the funniest moments were the sight gags, like when Tom's daughter, played by Conchita Campbell, gets slugged by a suitcase and flies off screen. The grotesque scene of Cindy accidentally bathing Mrs. Norris (Cloris Leachman) in urine was sadly typical of what passes for humor in bad movies like this. I can only wish there had been more clever verbal comedy and less of the scatological variety.
Along the way, Scary Movie 4 takes shots at horror films like Saw and The Village, but there are also spoofs of art films like Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby. The fact that over half the jokes in the movie are not related to any horror flick should be a clue that the well is dry.
Instead, the filmmakers spend much of their time lampooning the Steven Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds as well as star Tom Cruise himself. To take pot-shots at Cruise's personal life is as easy as making jokes about Michael Jackson (and they do that too). The question is, why? Making fun of horror movies within the framework of a horror movie was clever about three films ago. Now the idea is so tired that the jokes are coming from every direction and it is no longer about horror movies at all.
Although the Scary Movie franchise was started by the Wayans brothers (Keenen Ivory, Shawn, and Marlon), they are now completely removed from the project. And it shows. The script by Craig Mazin, Pat Proft, and Jim Abrahams (who co-wrote Airplane! with Zucker back in 1980), does not have the same juice as the original films. It appears the Wayans know when a good thing is over. Too bad Hollywood didn't see the curtain falling on this one.
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