I have waited more than a week to review Scary Movie 4, because I felt that it's, er, pretty damned challenging to review a film like this. Seriously, when I look at the reviews in Rottentomatoes (39% in the Tomatometer thus far), I have to scoff at the negative reviews, were critics really expecting THIS to be a masterpiece? This isn't a film where you can give negative or positive reviews, the usual methods used to evaluate the merits of a film are useless with films like Scary Movie 4. Is it acted well? Is it well-scripted? Is it well-directed? How's the script like? Oh please, are you even looking for all these?
I went into Scary Movie 4 expecting some laughs, and that was pretty much what I got. Series of skits that parody well-known films since 2003 (when Scary Movie 3 came out) linked together, it's kinda like watching a long series of SNL or MAD TV, kinda like watching through a few funny skits you see in Youtube, but bigger-budget, and possibly less original and funny. The main films that get spoofed are The Grudge, The Village, War of the Worlds and Saw. Watching these four films are essential to understand most of the jokes here, and whether understanding these jokes will make you laugh is entirely a different matter. Of course, even brief parodies of award-winning films like Brokeback Mountain (how could they let this one slip away, eh?) and Million Dollar Baby (unexpected, but clever!) were tossed in as well. Oh, Leslie Nielsen returns as the Bush-like U.S president, his appearance a spoof of Fahrenheit 9/11. And in the end, even Tom Cruise's 'jumping on sofa during Oprah show' incident is made fun of. Hey, there's even a Myspace reference (that prompted me to explore around the site by signing into my long-forgotten account, I'll talk more about it some other time).
Why list out the number of films and things being spoofed? Because, like I said, if you don't get any of these, watching Scary Movie 4 would've been a serious waste of time (and money). There's not much pleasure you can derive from a film like this, and you wouldn't want to miss anything while everyone else is laughing. The Scary Movie franchise, since it's been taken over by David Zucker in part 3, isn't only about spoofing horror films anymore, all kinds of major films and latest events from pop culture are targeted. But since it's such an established brand, changing the name from Scary Movie to something else might not be a good idea (look at Date Movie earlier this year) What can I say? It's just like watching the stuff you see regularly online, albeit with bigger budget, and superstar cameos. Shaquille O Neal, Dr. Phil, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, Charlie Sheen and Carmen Electra made their brief appearances. Yeah, it has its gross-out jokes and toilet humour, but it's pretty much just some harmless (and rather forgettable) fun, unlike, say, Wedding Crashers, or 40 Year Old Virgin, which would have you talking about for months, or quoting their lines. To me, despite laughing and being thoroughly amused with some scenes, more emotions were generated from me when my friend who saw the film with me was laughing and uttering the N-word at some point of the movie, I was so afraid then that I wanted to sneak out of the theaters. Random, I know.
Anyway, I won't tell you whether you should see the movie or not. I'm just telling you what you will expect from it. I'm not even going to waste my time giving you a summary of that thing. If you've long decided to see this, go ahead and do so, otherwise, you ain't missing much. You might get more laughs surfing around Youtube for funny clips anyway. But personally, I wouldn't mind if the Scary Movie franchise continues.
And to do something really ironic, I'm going to post two Scary Movie 4 clips I found from Youtube which I think are the funniest scenes in the film. I'm evil.
Here's the much-talked about Saw spoof with Dr Phil and Shaq in the beginning of the film.
And here's the obligatory Brokeback Mountain spoof.
Now, here's a trailer of the film.
And here's a video review of the film via The Movie Blog.
Other reviews of Scary Movie 4:
L & N Line
If you've reviewed the film too, post your URL on the comments section. If there are some good reviews of the film you want me to check out, do that as well.
I went into Scary Movie 4 expecting some laughs, and that was pretty much what I got. Series of skits that parody well-known films since 2003 (when Scary Movie 3 came out) linked together, it's kinda like watching a long series of SNL or MAD TV, kinda like watching through a few funny skits you see in Youtube, but bigger-budget, and possibly less original and funny. The main films that get spoofed are The Grudge, The Village, War of the Worlds and Saw. Watching these four films are essential to understand most of the jokes here, and whether understanding these jokes will make you laugh is entirely a different matter. Of course, even brief parodies of award-winning films like Brokeback Mountain (how could they let this one slip away, eh?) and Million Dollar Baby (unexpected, but clever!) were tossed in as well. Oh, Leslie Nielsen returns as the Bush-like U.S president, his appearance a spoof of Fahrenheit 9/11. And in the end, even Tom Cruise's 'jumping on sofa during Oprah show' incident is made fun of. Hey, there's even a Myspace reference (that prompted me to explore around the site by signing into my long-forgotten account, I'll talk more about it some other time).
Why list out the number of films and things being spoofed? Because, like I said, if you don't get any of these, watching Scary Movie 4 would've been a serious waste of time (and money). There's not much pleasure you can derive from a film like this, and you wouldn't want to miss anything while everyone else is laughing. The Scary Movie franchise, since it's been taken over by David Zucker in part 3, isn't only about spoofing horror films anymore, all kinds of major films and latest events from pop culture are targeted. But since it's such an established brand, changing the name from Scary Movie to something else might not be a good idea (look at Date Movie earlier this year) What can I say? It's just like watching the stuff you see regularly online, albeit with bigger budget, and superstar cameos. Shaquille O Neal, Dr. Phil, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, Charlie Sheen and Carmen Electra made their brief appearances. Yeah, it has its gross-out jokes and toilet humour, but it's pretty much just some harmless (and rather forgettable) fun, unlike, say, Wedding Crashers, or 40 Year Old Virgin, which would have you talking about for months, or quoting their lines. To me, despite laughing and being thoroughly amused with some scenes, more emotions were generated from me when my friend who saw the film with me was laughing and uttering the N-word at some point of the movie, I was so afraid then that I wanted to sneak out of the theaters. Random, I know.
Anyway, I won't tell you whether you should see the movie or not. I'm just telling you what you will expect from it. I'm not even going to waste my time giving you a summary of that thing. If you've long decided to see this, go ahead and do so, otherwise, you ain't missing much. You might get more laughs surfing around Youtube for funny clips anyway. But personally, I wouldn't mind if the Scary Movie franchise continues.
And to do something really ironic, I'm going to post two Scary Movie 4 clips I found from Youtube which I think are the funniest scenes in the film. I'm evil.
Here's the much-talked about Saw spoof with Dr Phil and Shaq in the beginning of the film.
And here's the obligatory Brokeback Mountain spoof.
Now, here's a trailer of the film.
And here's a video review of the film via The Movie Blog.
Other reviews of Scary Movie 4:
L & N Line
If you've reviewed the film too, post your URL on the comments section. If there are some good reviews of the film you want me to check out, do that as well.
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