Bit more about the Scary Movie 4, BBM parody.
By Simon Mounsey
Aug 28 2006 12:00PM
A ghetto parody of Brokeback Mountain, a father relentlessly beating the heck out of his daughter and a reenactment of Tom Cruise's mind boggling appearance on Oprah. What do all of these have in common? They're some of many missed and downright unfunny jokes in Scary Movie 4, the latest version of the horror spoof series.
Much like the other three films, the latest version starts with an opening sequence aimed at getting the audience's laughing from the starting line, this time with the likes of Shaq and Dr. Phil trapped in a sequence reminiscent of Saw - both of them trying to outwit the evil puppet who is trying to kill them viciously. To add humor or at least try to, the only way for them to survive this madman is for Shaq to make some free throws.
Then, the real "story" begins as Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) moves into a house to take care of a catatonic woman. When moving into the house, she eventually finds a little demonic boy who is haunting the home, and so she is on a mission, along with her pal Brenda (Regina Hall) to go to "the village" to find out who the father of this child is.
During this time, Cindy runs into the "man of her dreams" in Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko), a clueless guy who essentially plays the Tom Cruise role from War of the Worlds and so, he and his son and daughter flee to escape the tr-ipods.
The plot barely exists in this film. Yeah, they sort of have two plots between the two main leads, but it's not like it's vital to the film at any point, because the film at many points along the way will go into a completely different direction that has nothing to do with anything that is going on. One such example of this is the scene in the bar where Tom runs into Mahalik (Anthony Anderson) and Chingy; during this scene, there is a mockery of Brokeback Mountain completely out of nowhere.
Plot aside, the fact is that this film is just plain not funny. Fact is, in these films, plot has never been a real issue because the humor cancels it out but not in this case. To be honest, I only laughed one time while seeing this film during a scene between Tom and Mahalik, where one was trying to unlock the door when the other was trying to open it, cancelling it out and each other screaming at each other. Now, that was a hilarious scene but nothing else did I even become close to laughing.
It is quite evident to me that these Scary Movie writers really are having troubles coming up with new ideas because they pretty much miss on every single antic they try to create. The opening scene is an example of this as everyone knows Shaq can't hit free throws. This is essentially the same type of joke they do throughout the entire movie, ones the audience already knows and/or has already seen.
As far as the rest of the disc is concerned, it does have its fair share of content, from bloopers to interviews and a commentary track. These would be good features but for such a bad movie, it's really not worth your time.
If there is anything that Hollywood should learn from Scary Movie 4, it's that films of this genre need to sit on the back burner for a while. Putting these types of films out year after year is a dangerous thing because eventually, as is shown in this film, monotony was bound to happen. Do not waste a dime on this piece of garbage.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/54177/scary_movie_4_scarily_unfunny.html
