Scary Movie\ has become a movie monster in its own right—the horrible beast that refuses to die. And with comedic triumphs like ""The Naked Gun"" and ""Airplane!"" behind him, director David Zucker seemed like the perfect replacement for the Wayans brothers at the helm of the ""Scary Movie"" franchise.
However, it appears that both he and ""Scary Movie"" have lost their way since their respective heydays. ""Scary Movie 4,"" the series' new entry, meanders in childish toilet humor—and unfunny toilet humor at that—and is a far distance from where Marlon and Shawn Wayans left it years ago.
""SM 4"" follows Anna Faris, back as Cindy Campbell, as she tries to survive an alien attack, a haunted house, a creepy village and a ""Jigsaw"" look-alike with co-stars Regina Hall and series newcomer Greg Bierko.
But the plot, as always, is just a loose frame in which a bunch of funny things are supposed to
happen. Unfortunately, they don't. The movie instead feels obliged to parody the newest films rather than the ones that would be the best for parody.
The makers of ""SM 4"" should have had the foresight to see that ""Brokeback Mountain"" parodies and jokes about Tom Cruise's couch jumping with Oprah and Michael Jackson would have become passé by now. And instead of making light of these pop-culture moments and moving on, ""Scary Movie"" drives many of their jokes into the ground, wringing any last drop of humor that it can.
One bright spot is Leslie Neilsen, a veteran of Zucker's direction, in his brief appearances as the president. When given the right bits of physical comedy, there is still no one better than Nielsen, who provides a majority of the few laughs that are in the film.
Faris and Hall, the series' veterans, seem bored in their roles, and that says nothing of their acting. If in the first movie they were playing parodies of horror film actors, then by this point they are playing parodies of parodies. Bierko, who plays the Tom Cruise character from ""War of the Worlds,"" seems amateurish and never really finds his pace.
The film's biggest problem is that none of the characters relate to one another; they all seem to be used as gags. Even some of the starring actors only appear when they're needed for a joke and then vanish. It also tries to get some laughs using celebrities in cameo roles, but their inclusion seems forced and not particularly appropriate for the parts.
""SM4"" seems not to have the discipline to create a coherent plot arc, and the movie has a choppy, disjointed feel to it. The best parodies of films (such as ""Young Frankenstein,"" ""Airplane!"" or even the first ""Scary Movie"") found a way to bring parodies into the picture while staying in the same plot with the same characters through the whole film. ""SM4"" does not.
There are a few funny moments in ""SM 4"" but none of them are gut-busting. There will be a few chuckles and a couple of laughs, but there's nothing in the film that makes it particularly funny. More than anything, it is a movie that is going through the motions in a franchise that has grown a little stale and lost the edgy humor that it began with.
""Scary Movie 4"" signals a series in dire need of retooling, and even that may be too late. It scrapes through its 83-minute running time looking for humor in all the wrong places. It has lost the satire that guided the first movie. Like some of the scary movies that it has parodied, ""Scary Movie"" may have outlived its timeliness and significance. Maybe it's time the monster died for good.
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