Scary Movie 4 (2006)

Originally Reviewed

Monday August 21, 2006

There's a reason why the Wayans brothers clan stopped participating in this franchise after the second film. It's because they had the sense to realize that a cast of semi famous celebrities with little acting talent, the same stupid jokes made up of continuous sexual themes and making fun of movies that pretty much made fun of themselves, got ridiculously old the second time around. The fact of the matter is spoofs on motion pictures need to be limited to a few minute skits on Saturday Night Live or In Living Color, not be harshly extended to fill up an hour and a half of time and completely bore the audience with the an even more ridiculous story to an already bad film.

Scary Movie 4 continues its tradition of casting rappers with no acting ability, old has-beens, and Playboy bunnies in an attempt to form some sort of story out of spoofs of movies that for the most part were already pretty bad to begin with. Anna Faris and Regina Hall both return again as the only two characters who seem to have survived all four Scary Movie films, probably because no one else wanted the roles. The main plot for the film is a spoof on War of the Worlds followed by The Grudge, Saw II and Million Dollar Baby, and The Village. All the spoofs were pretty sub par except for The Grudge which turned out to be the funniest of them all, especially when Faris is talking to the dead kid in Japanese but all they are doing is saying Japanese electronic companies.

The main problem with Scary Movie 4 is the spoofs begin to become incredibly boring after about five minutes. I didn't like War of the Worlds to begin with, so I certainly don't want to see a spoof of the entire film, although the Michael Jackson part was amusing. Then there were spoofs on films that weren't even horror films like Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain (on second thought maybe Brokeback was a horror) which were a complete waste of time and didn't even properly fit into the story.

One thing I can say about the film is they had incredibly accurate costumes and sets which were pretty much photo copies of those from the original films. It definitely helped to set an atmosphere for the story but then with horrible acting and script it only turned it into an incredibly bad rip off of the original, which most of the time wasn't even funny. Although the film does have its moments that made me chuckle, they were quickly ruined when the joke would be milked to no end. Such as the scene near the end of the film where they make fun of Tom Cruise on Oprah, it was incredibly funny for the first minute then it began to get so ridiculous and stupid that it ruined the whole thing and became annoying.

In the end, the Scary Movie franchise died long ago, if it ever was alive, personally I thought it was always completely stupid, yet the public is still gullible enough to go see this crap and find it to be quality comedy. Someone tell me what is so great about the same format and the same jokes used on different films? It's old, it's played out, and it's completely boring, not to mention unoriginal. But of course as long as people are going to see it, there will be more Scary Movies to come, there has to be because it's the only job talentless and annoying Regina Hall and Anna Faris can get. And will someone tell me why King Kong is on the movie poster when he wasn't even in the movie?!?

4/10