No living organism, be they man, beast, or plant, should ever be asked to watch this. Comedy is subjective; everyone has a different range of humor that elicits laughter. That said, this still requires the presence of comedy in some shape or form. Some films achieve it unintentionally, like anything starring Steven Seagall or super-low budget horror films with utterly absurd premises. Unintentional comedies are a thing of beauty; conversely unintentional non-comedies should be avoided at all costs. Perhaps the best example of this accidentally unfunny genre is the spoof film as it has existed since the success of the first two entries in the Scary Movie franchise. Usually, the feckless Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg were to blame for the piss-poor comedy, but in the case of Scary Movie 4, the culprits are Craig Mazin, Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft – which makes its crimes against film even more egregious, because history has shown these men can and have done better.
Scary Movie and its first sequel weren’t masterworks of comedy, but they at least scored a few points on their parody subjects and justified their own existence (though the second one was notably weaker than the first). When the franchise switched from being the brainchild of Shawn Wayans and Marlon Wayans to being a cash cow for its studio, different writers were called in and Scary Movie 3 was a mixed bag. It was no longer a purely horror-based parody franchise, now it was just a collage of pop culture references tied together with loose jokes on plot elements of movies in recent memory. Scary Movie 4 made a minor effort towards trying to draw most of its humor from horror franchises, and it definitely had a fresh slate of films to draw upon, only it failed in its most basic objective: to tell a joke.
Let’s look at the films written by Scary Movie 4’s writers:
Craig Mazin – RocketMan, Senseless, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Superhero Movie
Jim Abrahams – Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (and its sequels), Hot Shots!, Hot Shots! Part Deux, and Jane Austen’s Mafia
Pat Proft – Real Genius, The Police Academy series, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (and its sequels), Hot Shots!, and Hot Shots! Part Deux
Admit it, Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft have a pretty great history of producing sight gag comedy, and you can definitely see their influence in Scary Movie 4. It’s just not funny. It feels forced, as if they were asked to throw in their brand of humor and “update it for the kids of today”. Apparently, that involves hyper-sexualizing things and making jokes about bling. The reason Hot Shots! and The Naked Gun stand as legendary comedies is because they avoided highly topical and dated comedy. Sure, Viagra jokes were funny for about a year, but they just don’t stand up to scrutiny over time. Accidentally stabbing a rare fish with a priceless pen while trying to interrogate a rich suspect (thank you, Naked Gun) is still funny because its simplicity and execution were flawless.
Just like two thirds of the film’s writing pedigree, Scary Movie 4’s director also suggest this film should have been funny. David Zucker, before the new millennium, gave us Airplane!, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun, and even BASEketball. I don’t know what happened, but once Zucker stepped into the year 2000, he lost any and all ability to properly time physical comedy.
The total lack of comedy displayed in Scary Movie 4’s worthless story of a woman (Anna Faris) hired to take care of an invalid in a haunted house in the midst of an alien invasion is only compounded by the fact that it forces us to accept that Proft, Abrahams, and Zucker, once comedy legends in their own right, have become dilapidated, condemned shells of the laugh factories they used to be.
Nothing in this film works. At the very most, it’ll goad some of the more impressionable viewers into smiling because they recognize the films being parodied or the famous faces popping up – but that’s not comedy. Comedy isn’t about recognizing where the joke is supposed to come from, that’s just the setup, there still has to be a punchline. Scary Movie 4 has none deserving of even the most modest chortle.
The wasted cast and cameo listing includes Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen (completely wasted), Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Chris Elliot, Carmen Electra, Shaquille O’Neal, Phil McGraw, Cloris Leachman, Holly Madison, Kendra Wilkinson, Bridget Marquardt, Chingy, Lil’ Jon, John Reardon, and Charlie Sheen. Cameos are not an adequate replacement for actual comedy.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
The extras easily beat out the film itself when it comes to worthwhile content. The featurettes include a conversation with the filmmakers, a profile of director David Zucker, a tribute to Zucker’s history of spoofing, a technical piece on special effects, a look at the “brilliance” of casting rappers as actors (a trick that works 5% of the time – and never works in this film), a look at the cast, a piece on Craig Bierko, bloopers, and then some deleted scenes with optional commentary by Zucker, Mazin, and producer Robert K. Weiss. Of these, the Zucker tribute is bittersweet for the reasons mentioned in the review above and the conversation of the filmmakers is agonizing as they actually seem to think they made a worthwhile film. The only things worth taking a look at are the featurette on Bierko and the bloopers, both of which are more amusing than the film itself. It’s a shame there’s no featurette devoted to Nielsen.
"Scary Movie 4" is on sale March 22, 2011 and is not rated. Comedy. Directed by David Zucker. Written by Craig Mazin, Jim Abrahams, Pat Proft. Starring Anna Faris, Anthony Anderson, Bill Pullman, Leslie Nielsen, Craig Bierko, Regina Hall.
