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PLOT: Are you kidding? In this ongoing spoof parade of popular movies, things expand beyond the horror genre to send up Saw, The Grudge, War Of The Worlds, The Village, Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby, among others.
Familiarity breeds big box office.
The highly anticipated Scary Movie 4 is a mostly mediocre outing, but that won't make much difference to fans of the franchise.
After an awkward opening bit with Dr. Phil and Shaquille O'Neal that borrows from the horror movie Saw, Anna Faris returns as goody two-shoes Cindy Campbell, vaguely moronic heroine of all the Scary Movie movies.
She encounters Charlie Sheen and a Viagra joke, fairly terrifying even to contemplate, and then Craig Bierko enters the story.
Bierko takes on the Tom Cruise role for the War Of The Worlds send-up, and otherwise, he and Faris weave through a convoluted (and somewhat slow) mix of bits from Million Dollar Baby, The Grudge, The Village and even Brokeback Mountain -- with Anthony Anderson as a gay cowboy. It's fairly stupid.
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Others joining the silliness are Regina Hall, once again playing the tart; Molly Shannon as Bierko's ex-wife, and Carmen Electra, Bill Pullman and Chris Elliott in a parody of The Village.
Then for good measure there's Michael Madsen, James Earl Jones, Cloris Leachman, Leslie Nielsen, Lil' Jon, D-Ray and just about everyone else you can think of.
Scary Movie 4 has some comedy gold in there among the dross.
There's a running gag with a little girl getting smashed around by her oblivious father. (That doesn't sound funny, does it? It is, though.)
There are exchanges in fake Japanese, torture for Cloris Leachman, an evil spirit child and Mike Tyson biting ears in the ring.
Scary Movie 4 has the usual toilet humour, some fairly good visual jokes, a couple of laugh-out-loud moments and an ending that mocks Tom Cruise doing his couch jump on Oprah. It's less offensive than earlier Scary outings. It's also less funny. But what the heck.
BOTTOM LINE: For people who like this sort of thing, this is just the sort of thing they like.
(This film is rated 14-A)