Scary Movie 4
Director: David Zucker
With: Anna Faris, Craig Bierko
Runtime: 83 min
The fourth in an increasingly popular series of spoof movies, Scary Movie 4 is just like the others, but more stupid. This time around, Cindy Campbell, (Anna Faris) has found a new house to live in, which she discovers is haunted by a little Japanese boy (see The Grudge) and she is led to a mysterious village to find out how he died. At the same time, in the house next door lives Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko), whose story comes straight from War of the Worlds.
Hilariously, instead of aliens, giant ipods- called ‘Tr-ipods’, in a clever product placement - are destroying the world via a playlist called ‘Human Destruction’. The two of them fall in love, and, along with Cindy’s old friend Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall) overcome various obstacles, including being trapped by Saw-like dummies, all of which is smattered with the usual serving of gross-out humour.
This is for true Scary Movie fans only. Interestingly, it is the first of the series to be shot in high definition video, not that it does it any favours. With Shawn and Marlon Wayans, who wrote the first two in the series, absent as writers, Scary Movie 4 just doesn’t work. In Scary Movie 4, the franchise seems tired, though Anna Faris, through her wide-eyed naivety, does a pretty good job in the lead. Furthermore, the only true horror movie that is spoofed is The Grudge (apart from the more thriller-esque The Village), which just seems to expose the whole Hollywood moneymaking scheme behind the franchise. Indeed, the spoofing of Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby means it is hardly a film, more like a series of skits where you play guess-what-they’re-spoofing at the beginning of each scene.
That said, the film’s funniest moments come when any reference is made to real-life politics, and Tom Cruise’s increasing weirdness. Leslie Nielsen is brilliant as America’s President Harris, particularly in a parody of Bush’s reaction to September 11. There is also a hilarious spoof of Cruise’s ‘I love Katie’, couch-jumping stint on Oprah. Carmen Electra is, however, ridiculous as a blind village girl, as is Bill Pullman as her father.
Some may argue that this new genre of films-spoofing-films are created for entertainment, and this does provide it - to a very narrow extent. Although there are some funny moments, any sense of humour is undermined by the practical absence of plot and character development. Again: for fans only.
