Scary Movie 4 has almost nothing beyond boring bad jokes, even by its predecessors’ standards.
In Scary Movie 4, Anna Faris (the first three Scary Movie installments) reprises her role as dumb blonde Cindy Campbell, this time taking up a nursing job in a haunted house. When she encounters the ghost of Japanese boy (cued from Ju-On), Cindy decides to find out how the kid was killed, while juggling a blossoming romance with next door neighbor Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko, Cinderella Man) and an attack on earth by a bunch of laser-shooting alien Tr-iPods. Yeah, we know. We too were left in complete shock at the sheer stupidity of the plot (and we use the term “plot” loosely), despite knowing what to expect from the franchise.
The latest in this spoof series is totally inane, and once you step into the theater, you’re bombarded with tired slapstick humor parodying The Village, Brokeback Mountain and Return of the Living Dead. The only real saving grace are hints of cute dialogue; such as the grammar lesson between characters CJ (Kevin Hart, Soul Plane) and Mahalik (Anthony Anderson, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) that goes “This is some s**t … up with which … we will not put!”, and the semantic bantering in a village courtroom—which are two of the only really chuckle-worthy bits.
Otherwise, Anna Faris is sickeningly sweet as the oh-so-innocent Cindy. Regina Hall (The Honeymooners) as the loud-mouthed Brenda Meeks is simply annoying, while Baywatch babe Carmen Electra’s cringe-worthy performance as a visually impaired village girl will, no doubt, give her the dubious title of “That Blind Farting Chick”—yes, she lets out a lot of air in this one.
Then there are the groan inducing moments, which Scary Movie 4 is practically soaked in. There’s the unfunny way Tom Ryan unknowingly and repeatedly assaults his daughter, as well as the boring and soooooo overdone reenactment of Oprah’s infamous jump-on-the-sofa interview with Tom Cruise. Hello!
If you’re willing to completely shut down your brain for some MTV-like entertainment, hop in for a dose of toilet humor and a few precious guffaws, this is the film for you. If you have no tolerance for stupidity, however, the latest in the Scary Movie series is, in a nutshell, harebrained to the point of insulting its audience.