WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Dim-witted Cindy Campbell (Anna Faris) and her sex-crazed friend, Brenda (Regina Hall), team up with cute-but-clueless Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko) to save the world from a hostile alien invasion, with hints of War of the Worlds, Saw II, Million Dollar Baby and The Village. Celebrity cameos include Carmen Electra, Shaquille O’Neal, Dr. Phil McGraw, Bill Pullman, Molly Shannon and Michael Madsen.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

They said lightning never strikes the same place twice. Clearly, nobody told David Zucker. “Scary Movie 4” crashes into theaters this weekend like that alien tripod smashing through your neighbor’s house, loud, ridiculous, and somehow impossible to look away from. And if you are sitting in a theater filled with Black folks right now, you already know something that your coworkers downtown have absolutely no clue about: this movie was made for us. Not marketed to us. Not adjusted for us. Actually, genuinely, organically funny to us in ways that most mainstream critics writing for major newspapers are going to completely miss when they file their reviews tonight. The “Scary Movie” franchise attracts Black viewers because we know absurdity is a basis for comedy, we have always had an appreciation for humor that calls out authority figures and finds humor in the chaos around us – we do not see this form of comedy as lowbrow. We developed this ability centuries ago and can quickly identify films that speak that same language. “Scary Movie 4” speaks that language better than any entry in this franchise so far. Director David Zucker, the genius behind “Airplane!” and “The Naked Gun,” returns with screenwriters Craig Mazin and Jim Abrahams to deliver something that works harder and smarter than it has any right to. The film weaves together parodies of “The Grudge,” “War of the Worlds,” “Saw,” “The Village,” “Million Dollar Baby,” and “Brokeback Mountain” into one surprisingly connected story, and the fact that it mostly holds together is its own kind of miracle. Our girl Cindy Campbell, played with absolute fearless commitment by the wildly underrated Anna Faris, is now working as a home nurse caring for a completely unresponsive elderly woman named Mrs. Norris, played by Cloris Leachman, doing what Cloris Leachman does better than anyone alive. The house is haunted by a creepy, androgynous Asian boy-ghost, which connects directly to the world ending outside when massive alien machines called Tri-Pods begin destroying everything in sight. Next door lives Tom Ryan, played by Craig Bierko, as a divorced, working-class father doing his best impression of Tom Cruise without any of Tom Cruise’s movie star smoothness, which is precisely the joke. Brenda Meeks, the role Regina Hall was destined for, is played by Regina Hall with energy and fearlessness in every scene, giving an elevated experience. Brenda is funny, loud, and direct, and represents something real, so when we see Brenda again, we can recognize her. Brenda is not the sidekick or comic relief character; she is the co-lead, and Hall portrays her with the confidence of someone who truly understands their assignment. Leslie Nielsen is the President Harris character, who was obviously written as a parody of George W. Bush. One of the funniest moments in the film involve him receiving notice while in a school that the world is about to be invaded. The original context of this situation is something that a great many Black people can very easily remember, and still talk about, and Zucker’s decision to satirize the event in no other way but this way gives us what we need to feel the right of it. We have always processed our political pain through comedy. This movie trusts us to do the same. ‘The War of the Worlds’ parody is particularly praiseworthy in that it does much more than merely replicate the Spielberg film; rather, it questions it. The film makes a clever joke about the alien machines shutting down mechanical devices in this film (including bicycles and skateboards), and it will be missed by a large number of viewers, while urban viewers will catch it at once. The film shows us and includes us, rather than merely displaying Black characters as decorations surrounding white protagonists saving the planet when the aliens vaporize characters at street level, because the only things left behind after street-level characters have been vaporized by aliens are the characters’ jewelry. Another consideration that further illustrates an understanding of the distinctions in how Black audiences view celebrities and cultural reference points from the mainstream media’s perspective is that the narration is by James Earl Jones rather than Morgan Freeman. The film opens with Dr. Phil and Shaquille O’Neal chained together in the “Saw” bathroom, and the image of Shaq playing this scene completely straight while Dr. Phil loses his composure is one of the funniest opening sequences the franchise has ever produced. It signals immediately that “Scary Movie 4” is operating with both cultural awareness and genuine comedic intelligence, regardless of how juvenile some later scenes become. The fact that these weak points exist and their need for honesty is apparent. The parody of “Brokeback Mountain” feels obligatory, as if it were included solely because everyone expected it, not because anyone had an original take on it. The impression by Craig Bierko as Tom Cruise would have been sharper had the movie been released six months ago, when Cruise’s couch-hopping incident on “Oprah” was still fresh in the minds of the public. The flashback to “Million Dollar Baby” explaining Cindy’s backstory was a painful distraction to the middle part of the movie. Carmen Electra makes every effort to contribute to the physical comedy of the “Village” segment, but the material itself does not match her efforts. None of these failures break the film, because Zucker maintains such a relentless pace that the next joke arrives before the last one fully registers. When the comedy works, it works enormously. When it does not, something else is already happening. Scary Movie 4 is a funny film; however, it is not considered a Classic comedy – yet. Scary Movie 4 wants to be the best film of the franchise and has been released as one of the most aware culturally of any mainstream comedy this decade. The film understands that the communities that are most often the target audience for horror films, and suffer most from the effects of government failings, are those same communities that have learned to use humor as a coping mechanism for their hardships, and they deserve to see in a comedy the reflection of their experiences through the film’s material. Black audiences built this franchise at the box office from the very beginning. This fourth entry finally returns the favor completely. Go see it with your people, in a crowded theater, with plenty of snacks. That is the only way this movie should be experienced.

OUR RATING – A SATISFYING 7

MEDIA

• Genre – Comedy

Street date

• Digital – March 30, 2021
• DVD – August 15, 2006
• Blu-Ray – March 22, 2011
• Video – 1080p
• Screen size 1.85:1
• Sound – English LPCM 5.1
• Subtitles – English, English SDH, Spanish, French

Extras

• Deleted Scenes (SD, 14 min.) — Optional commentary is provided by director David Zucker, writer Craig Mazin, and producer Robert K. Weiss. These more, or less, are alternate scenes that didn’t make it into the movie, instead of completely deleted scenes. Don’t worry, they’re all just as unfunny as the movie itself. Move on.
• The Scary Truth: A Conversation with the Filmmakers (SD, 35 min.) — Mazin, Zucker, and Weiss all sit down and discuss the movie. They’re all bonkers. I can’t believe that they’re able to fill up 35 minutes of time talking about this movie, but somehow they do.
• The Man Behind the Laugh: David Zucker (SD, 3 min.) — Apparently the director, David Zucker, has an annoyingly high-pitched laugh. This featurette is all about his laugh and people on set talking about it.
• Bloopers (SD, 7 min.) — Standard bloopers here.
• Zany Spoof Humor: Zucker Style (SD, 3 min.) — A few talking heads talk about Zucker’s humor style.
• The Visual Effects of ‘Scary Movie 4’ (SD, 8 min.) — Alison O’Brien, visual FX supervisor, comments on the movie’s effects and how they were able to do some of the different CG effects like the tripods.
• YoungbloodZ (SD, 3 min.) — This is a short featurette about the rapper duo that is in the film.
• Rappers…Actors (SD, 2 min.) — Other rappers like Chingy and Lil’ John are featured here.
• The Cast (SD, 16 min.) — An overview of the cast, new faces and recurring roles.
• Improvisation of Craig Bierko (SD, 7 min.) — The most mildly interesting featurette of the bunch. This shows the improv Bierko did when it came to doing the Tom Cruise appearance on Oprah as crazy as he could.