Scary Movie 4 (**1/4)

From the people who brought you the execrable Scary Movie 3, this pastiche of The Grudge, The Village and the Spielberg version of War of the Worlds follows the same formula, but has a few actual laughs.

Rarely have I been so pleasantly surprised by mediocrity. The first two movies in this series were not exactly laugh riots, but #3 was a voracious black hole of anti-humor, and the whole “creative” team from that one have returned. Anna Faris is also back as the kindly but clueless Cindy Campbell. The main storyline splices parts of The Grudge, The Village and the Steven Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds. So, for example, the “Tom Cruise” character plays catch with his son, just like in War of the Worlds, only he throws the ball so hard it hits poor Cindy in the head. The creepy un-dead Grudge boy also menaces Cindy, but falls down the steps. Get it? Tossed in are random parodies of other things, not necessarily scary movies, or even movies. Just like in last month’s dreadful Date Movie, a creepy Michael Jackson shows up, and there’s a whole subplot involving Leslie Nielsen as an ineffectual president whose response when he hears about the alien invasion is to proceed with a reading of a children’s story. This is just as obvious as everything else in the movie, but I laughed anyway. There’s a line about abortion, the only thing at all edgy, that I thought was funnier than anything else. At least half of the rest falls flat, but that’s still better than it could have been.

IMDb link

posted 9/1/13