“Scary Movie 4,” and the franchise the bred it, is one of the worst examples of this sub-genre. It’s a lazy, hackneyed, and utterly irritating mess that relies on different movies references for laughs without spinning it into comedy. Feature someone who looks like Napoleon Dynamite, spoof some recent current event, perhaps have a pop culture figure spoof themselves and expect laughs; and that’s just the first five minutes alone. But that’s just not how it works.
“Scary Movie 4” is another desperate attempt to milk this ridiculously lame series, and though it’s not as painful as “Date Movie,” its proof that the geniuses have left the building, and mediocrity now resides. The writers here don’t even need to do too much work, since they’re basically already spoofing stupidity. How do you spoof something that was already absurd in the first place? Steven Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” there’s the Asian horror genre, and the Tom Cruise Oprah fiasco, and pair that with sex jokes, and voila, instant comedy.
The only true saving grace of this trash heap is the hilarious impression of Tom Cruise by the infinitely talented Craig Bierko. True he doesn’t redeem the film, but surely he pulls in an awfully funny performance and keeps the lame gags worth watching if only to see what he can do when he embodies Cruise and his idiosyncrasies. There’s also the finale spoofing Cruise’s infamous appearance on “Oprah” which goes on way too long, but has an opening that’s worth a gaff or two.
The spoofing of the pure stupidity of “War of the Worlds” also inspires a good laugh or two with the noting of the plot holes, and the basic skewering of the Fanning character. The writers depend much too often on tired outdated gags that weren’t funny when they were popular, and shockingly, they just continue to drain the talents of folks like Anna Faris, Craig Bierko (how did they rope you into this?), and Cloris Leachman respectively, and there’s not a single laugh here, no matter how hard they try with this tired material.
And the creators are just a year too late with spoofs of “Million Dollar Baby,” and (ugh) “Brokeback Mountain” that results in an utterly horrifying musical number that just left me pitying movie geeks like myself who were forced to sit through this. Oh, and there are also the cumbersome Asian stereotypes that are so unfunny they’re not even offensive, but I’ll spare you a rant. “Scary Movie 4” is the worst type of comedy, it’s a lazy little product of mediocrity that will be woefully outdated in the next year.