Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Scary Movie 4 Blu-ray Movie Review

. . .because, Lord knows, we haven't seen enough Charlie Sheen lately.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 5, 2011

It’s not very often that the Editorial Page of the local newspaper can provide a hearty laugh, but readers of The Oregonian must have gotten a guffaw from the March 4, 2011 opinion piece headlined, “Charlie Sheen: The new white noise.” This critique of modern media’s fascination with scandal and public meltdowns may have conveniently ignored the fact that it seems to be an inbred condition of Mankind to show interest in salacious content, something that may be granted wider coverage nowadays due to round the clock “news” channels, but is certainly no different in essence from gossipy neighbors of yore or even the Penny Dreadfuls of the 19th century. Perhaps luckily, Sheen is granted only a cameo in Scary Movie 4, a film which continues the Scary Movie franchise, with all of that franchise’s pluses and minuses. On the plus side, this film is often scabrously hilarious, managing to skewer everything from Shaquille O’Neal’s inability to make freethrows to Dr. Phil’s penchant for summing up a lifetime in country boy platitudes to Tom Cruise’s couch jumping antics on Oprah to a number of fairly recent horror films, including the Saw films, The Grudge, The Village, and the Cruise War of the Worlds remake (with some passing nods to Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby just for good measure). On the minus side, while the film starts strongly with a great Saw sendup featuring Dr. Phil and Shaquille, and while it has some great moments interspersed throughout, it is often a slipshod mishmash that relies a few times too frequently on people getting bonked in the head and other similarly juvenile humor.

Film comedy changed forever with the release of Airplane! in 1980. The brainchild of the Zucker brothers, Jim and David, along with cohort Jim Abrahams, Airplane! was the first film which combined virtually nonstop one-liners and sight gags with an almost surreal ambience that quickly made it a favorite of both disaffected youth as well as more “seasoned” adults. No one had ever seen anything like “June Cleaver” (Barbara Billingsley) speaking jive, or the patently silly bits like Leslie Nielsen declaiming “And don’t call me Shirley!” before, and it was like a breath of fresh air, especially after the often portentous (and pretentious) films of the 1970’s, many of which had emerged from the self-conscious and often narcissistic indie movement. Airplane! was the harbinger for a whole new genre of film comedy, one which attempted to skewer entire genres of film with a nonstop barrage of lunacy. Many of the films which came in the wake of Airplane! were middling attempts to recreate Airplane!’s deliciously wicked sense of insanity, and even the Zucker brothers themselves have had a spotty record in equaling the consistent level of hilarity that Airplane! offered. (My wife, a nice Jewish girl from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, would like me to take this moment to point out that the Zuckers—as well as Abrahams—are nice Jewish boys from Milwaukee who, like my wife, graduated from the University of Wisconsin Madison, a school my wife insists was a hotbed of comic activity that also bred a concern David Zucker would also become involved with, The Onion).

Scary Movie 4 attempts a passing bit of continuity with the previous Scary Movie entries, bringing back hapless Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris), introduced in this film in the Sheen cameo segment which, while laugh out loud hilarious, may be a bit unseemly given Sheen’s antics of the past few weeks (months? years?). Cindy is soon involved in a Grudge match with catatonic Mrs. Norris (Cloris Leachman), while falling for her “Cruise”-ing neighbor, Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko). Scary Movie 4 segues fairly seamlessly between the Grudge send-up and the one aimed at the Cruise War of the Worlds, managing to create a bizarre parallel universe where both films actually seem to make a little more sense by being commingled. There are a number of really funny bits scattered here and there in this opening gambit, my favorites being Mrs. Norris tied to a violently flapping clothesline as the aliens approach and Cindy and the Grudge ghost child’s “conversation” in Japanese, which consists entirely of brand names and other colloquial Japanese terms (subtitles are conveniently provided so that you know what they’re “really” saying). Leslie Nielsen is also on hand as The President, who, a la Bush on September 11, wants to hear the end of a children’s book before deciding what to do about the approaching alien invasion. Once we segue into The Village’s parody, we get Bill Pullman and Carmen Electra as notable villagers.

As is typical in the Scary Movie franchise, things teeter precariously close to the edge of tastelessness with fair regularity. The Brokeback Mountain parody, while uproarious, may leave some feeling just slightly uncomfortable, especially once the gerbil is introduced. The long established Scary Movie trope of Michael Jackson also seems at least potentially troublesome now considering the pop star’s demise. But that very tastelessness is probably part and parcel of Scary Movie 4’s allure, at least to a certain demographic.

Part of what’s happened since Airplane! is the propensity of comedy writers working in this general idiom to throw as much as they can on the wall to see what sticks. That gives Scary Movie 4 a certain foreword momentum, if only because you know if one gag flops, there’s sure to be another one coming within seconds that may hit. But it also gives the film a disjointed, anecdotal quality that some may find the filmic equivalent of junk food. It’s tasty, but the calories are often fairly empty.

David Zucker directs competently here, managing to frame many scenes pretty much directly as they were in the original films Scary Movie 4 parodies. The script, by Abrahams, Craig Mazin and Pat Proft, does a decent enough job of combining enough disparate elements to keep the audience guessing about what poor “victim” is going to be skewered next, while giving enough of a basic structure to allow the film some minor semblance of continuity. (Since I gave my wife a “shout out” above, I would like to take this moment to point out that Pat Proft married one of my favorite singer-actresses of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the absolutely luscious blonde Karen Philipp, who was the alluring tall singer in Brasil ’66 and Brasil ’77, and later went on to appear briefly as Nurse Dish in the television version of M*A*S*H. That’s Philipp, with her long blonde hair, who leans over the stretcher in M*A*S*H’s opening credits sequence. It’s my considered opinion Karen should cameo in an upcoming Scary Movie, perhaps as a lounge singer.)

There’s no denying that Scary Movie 4 is downright stupid at times, but there's also no denying that it's also incredibly funny a lot of the time, often by virtue of that very stupidity. The franchise may be losing a little steam as it moves along, but as any number of recent "real" horror releases ably proves, there's no dearth of material to continue skewering.

Scary Movie 4 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite being encoded with the now relatively ancient MPEG-2 codec, Scary Movie 4's 1080p transfer in 1.85:1 is decently sharp and provides some very good to excellent fine detail. Colors are well saturated and lifelike, the film maintains a pleasing amount of grain, and, best of all, the very impressive special effects sequences really shine throughout, especially the alien invasion segments. There's a certain lurid quality to a lot of the colors here, and some of the Grudge elements are purposefully dark and murky, but overall the film maintains solid contrast and substantial black levels. While the film is certainly nowhere near reference quality, for an admittedly ridiculous little comedy like this is, the image is reasonably sharp and well defined.

Scary Movie 4 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Scary Movie 4's uncompressed LPCM 5.1 audio mix offers some nice immersive moments, notably in the great alien attack sequence, where the surrounds are filled with everything from tornadic winds to the impressive LFE of lightning bolts hitting the occasional hapless child in the backyard. A number of funny sound effects dot the film, everything from the expected quick cut "jolts" of LFE to more subtle moments as when Cindy enters the Grudge house's secret attic and pulls back insanely huge amounts of cobwebs. Dialogue is crisp and clear throughout this enterprise, and the entire mix sports excellent fidelity and a very fun and funny ambience.

Scary Movie 4 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Zucker, Mazin and Producer Robert K. Weiss (SD; 13:43) offers some funny scenes, including some alternate takes of scenes that did make it into the film. The commentary is very funny as well.
• The Scary Truth: A Conversation with the Filmmakers (SD; 35:10) is a sit down with Weiss, Mazin and Zucker, all three of whom are as crazy as you would guess from their films.
• The Man Behind the Laugh: David Zucker (SD; 3:44) has Craig Bierko and others commenting on Zucker's strange piercing laugh, which is featured in abundance throughout this brief featurette.
• Bloopers (SD; 6:59) has some great stuff, including Zucker trying to reign in Dr. Phil's enthusiasm in one scene.
• Zany Spoof Humor: Zucker Style (SD; 2:53) offers Leslie Nielsen and others commenting on the Zucker legacy.
• The Visual Effects of Scary Movie 4 (SD; 8:30) features FX Supervisor Alison O'Brien and others on her team discussing the film's really rather impressive special effects.
• YoungbloodZ (SD: 3:26) profiles the rapper duo who appear in the film.
• Rappers. . .Actors (SD; 2:38) looks at some of the other rappers in the film, including Lil Jon and Chingy.
• The Cast (SD; 16:01) is a fun look at the many new and returning faces in Scary Movie 4.
• Improvisation of Craig Bierko (SD; 7:09) is a nice extended look at how Bierko took a minimal amount of information on the printed page for the Oprah segment which closes the film and then took it to Cruise-worthy extremes.

Scary Movie 4 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

You know what you're in for going into a Scary Movie and this latest entry in the franchise, while completely predictable in a general sense, has enough good natured fun to keep the laughs coming at a fairly steady pace. Yes, it's completely juvenile a lot of the time, but let's face it, that's what makes it so funny. Recommended.