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Film: Scary Movie 4 [PG-13] 90 minutes
WIP™ Scale: $8.00
When 1st Seen: 15 April 2006
Time: 8:15 p.m.
Where Viewed: AMC Loews Factoria, Bellevue, WA
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DVD | soundtrack |
Are you familiar with the Scary Movie movies? Well, back in around the year 2000, the Wayans Brothers unleashed what is now, I guess with four films you sort of have to begin to call it, a franchise of spoofs on horror films. I actually did see the first one against my better judgment. As I recall, it was a few cheap laughs, but nothing anywhere near worthy of a sequel. Well, as we all know, my movie taste does not run the world, nor should it. So, thankfully for the fans of this genre, a sequel, and as we now know, as well as two follow-ups have been made. I don’t know if these movies are more fun for the actors or the audience that enjoys them because they usually do get some decently well-known people to star in them sometimes—this one has Dr. Phil, Shaquille O'Neal, Charlie Sheen, and Leslie Nielson, just to name a few. I also don’t know if they will now become a mainstay because it is an honor of sorts for your movie to be spoofed. So, for example, this one focuses on spoofing Spielberg’s The War of the Worlds, The Grudge, and Saw mostly, with a few others like The Village and Brokeback Mountain—which I guess was a scary movie to a lot of people—tossed in for good measure. This fourth installment was less a Wayans Brothers’ product as it was directed by David Zucker who has a long history of spoof-movie directing (he also directed the last Scary Movie) and co-written by Craig Mazin (he also co-wrote the last one) and Jim Abrahams (who also has a long history of writing spoof films). Personally, I think spoof films can be ingenious. They can poke some serious fun at things in movies that were kind of silly or made no sense or were overly melodramatic. I, however, found the previous set of Scary Movies I & II, I did not see III, to be too gross for my taste. This one, however, avoids much of the gross out humor with the exception of one scene where Cindy (Anna Faris) Campbell--one of the consistent characters from all four movies—gives her poor charge played by Cloris Leachman a sponge bath and she keeps missing the bucket and hitting the bed pan instead. Yeah, it was gross. Most of the rest of the film, however, avoids such juvenile antics, thank goodness because there’s nothing worse than chowing down one of those hot dogs straight off the rollers, a jumbo nachos, a large bucket of buttery-flavored popcorn, and a tall half blue raspberry half white cherry Icee® and then seeing something really gross. The result on my stomach well...I don’t want to cater to that audience. Anyway, so Scary Movie 4 started out with one of the most wickedly funny gag bits I’ve seen in a movie in a really long, long time. It featured the previously mentioned O’Neal and Dr. Phil in a re-creation of a scene from the movie Saw—which I also did not see, but you don’t need to have seen to fully understand the humor in this scene. I am not going to lie and say I am that proud of myself, but I was laughing out loud so hard as to make a minor spectacle of myself which usually inspires other audience members to laughter as well (either at me or the movie—not sure which). Nothing in the rest of the film even comes close to this opening bit. You could leave just after it and get your money’s worth. Of course, you would miss my other two favorite parts: (A) Tom (Craig Bierko) Ryan saves the world from an invasion of Tripods from Mars and then appears on the mock Oprah Show spoofing the now infamous appearance by Tom Cruise, and (B) Cindy Campbell and her gal pal Brenda (Regina Hall) Meeks venture in to a re-creation of M. Night Shyamalan's Village where they attempt to accost two women to obtain their clothes so they can ‘blend in’—the results of which were hilarious.
In general, I probably do not need to remind you that this movie is a spoof of the spoof genre. Therefore, one does not look for brilliant acting. One looks for clever spoofing. There is a lot of clever spoofing going on here. You really have to see pretty much every movie to find all of the spoofs. There is generally also some clever casting such as the little girl from The 4400 (Conchita Campbell) playing the Dakota Fanning role in the War of the Worlds spoof. There have to be a few running gags between all of the films also. As spoof films go, this is one of the better ones. It is certainly a whole lot better than this year’s other spoof offering, the atrocious Date Movie. It does not approach my all-time favorite spoof movie Airplane!, but nothing probably ever will. I apologize to the genre, because, it will be very difficult, due to the construction and design of the W.I.P. Scale™ for a spoof film to ever qualify for a rating higher than $9. The material is so derivative by nature that it naturally begs for the second run movie house. So, a $9 for a spoof film would be considered very, very good. I think Scary Movie 4 warrants, therefore, $8 on the W.I.P. Scale™. My only wish was that they would have spoofed When a Stranger Calls and The Hills Have Eyes . Maybe next time! Oh, and by the way, these movies are not actually scary, in case you didn’t figure that out.
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Scary Movie 4 [DVD](2006) DVD
Scary Movie 4 (Unrated Version) [DVD](2006) DVD
Scary Movie 4 (Unrated Version--Widescreen) [DVD](2006) DVD
Scary Movie 2 [VHS](2001) VHS
Scary Movie 2 [DVD](2001) DVD
Scary Movie 3 [VHS](2003) VHS
Scary Movie 3.5 (Unrated Version) [DVD](2003) DVD
Scary Movie [DVD](2000) DVD
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