“This ain’t a war, anymore than a war between men and maggots. Or, dragons and wolves. Or, men riding dragons, throwing wolves at maggots.”

Justin’s rating: The duck dies! The duck dies, people!

Justin’s review: Why am I, a sophisticated grownup, a secret fan of spoof movies? I suppose it’s because of how uncomplicated they are. These movies have one mission — to make you laugh by any means possible, usually by poking fun at famous films and pop culture in general. And they do this through sheer joke density, throwing a ton of stuff at the viewer without much of a concern about a cohesive plot or build-up.

It’s dumb. I know. It’s stupid humor. It’s the lowest common denominator. But sometimes we need slapstick, dad jokes, and silly sight gags to counter the utter pretentiousness of CINEMA.

So I’m on a very gradual quest to watch and review most of the major spoofs of our time, which means that one day, I’ve got to finish the Scary Movie franchise. As much as I wasn’t a fan of the first couple films, this series did pick up when the Wayans departed and Zucker, Abrahams, and Proft showed up with their trademark zaniness.

Scary Movie 4 was the last one made in the 2000s, and the final appearance of Leslie Nielsen in this series. Anna Faris and Regina Hall both return as a tag-teaming female comedic leads, along with Craig Bierko (The Thirteenth Floor) as the Tom Cruise stand-in. Of course, they all encounter a never-ending parade of famous faces and cameos who wanted to get in on the party.

Since culture was still making movies that we talked about and remembered, Scary Movie 4 had plenty of material from 2004 and 2005 to pad out its 83-minute gagfest. Some of the bigger films that they spoof include Saw, War of the Worlds, The Grudge, and The Village. That’s actually a pretty good cross-section of popular horror at the time: J-horror, torture porn, and whatever M. Night Shyamalan’s dream journal was spitting out that week.

I particularly liked the speed running of all Japanese horror tropes through the most haunted house ever. The ghost kid speaking “Japanese” by saying nothing but well-known brand names while the subtitles filled in the gap had me snickering too.

Is there a plot here? Sort of, I guess. Cindy falls in love with Tom, Tom’s an awful dad, Brenda from the previous movies comes back to life, there’s a massive alien invasion, and all of the aforementioned movies and a few more are stitched together so that halfway-sober audience members could point and go, “I get that reference!”

There is a lot of people getting smacked, hit, and knocked over. Like, a lot. A LOT. A lot a lot a lot. I know what you’re thinking a “lot” is, but I need you to add a good dozen, no, two dozen more cartoonish times where people get slapped upside the head, or whacked in the junk, or tossed out of windows, or trip over virtually nothing. The filmmakers clearly gave everyone instructions that if any scene had a few extra seconds, someone needed to be bowled over with associated sound effects.

Anna Farris always cracks me up whenever she shows up in movies. She doesn’t get enough love for being a whole-hearted silly ditz. And Bierko does the job of a straight guy really well. It was sad to see a more decrepit Leslie Nielsen, but he gets in a few lines and takes a victory lap around the place.

Scary Movie 4 may not be quite up to the level of Scary Movie 3, but it pairs well with it. The parodies are pretty well done — and with a lot more special effects than one would anticipate — even though it doesn’t quite dip as deep into the horror genre this time around. I laughed a few times, winced once or twice, and sat up and pointed to say, “I get that reference!”

Intermission!

• Reportedly, the Saw bathroom recreation for the intro was so spot-on that the makers of Saw 3 asked to use it.
• Basketball players should watch themselves in low spaces
• “Kobe?”
• Dr. Phil and Shaq chained up to a toilet is never a good sign. They are not good actors.
• “You go first.” “Bulls–t!”
• James Earl Jones as the Narrator
• I admit I did not expect to see cells dancing to “Baby Got Back” today
• Charlie Sheen didn’t get credited for his part in this
• Scrabble pillow fights
• I’m always in favor of chucking cats out of windows in movies as a comedic device
• “Not the monkeys! They’re loose!”
• The baboon driving the forklift
• “Why would you do that, that’s my first time meeting him.”
• Girls with hanging tongues make for good envelope lickers
• Splitting Duraflame logs got a laugh
• Ghosts can be burned
• All the people Million Dollar Baby breaking their necks
• “I blame myself for it all.” “As well you should.”
• “Why don’t any of us have dryers?”
• “My bowels have stopped moving! Whyyyy!”
• The giant iPod… this was 2006, after all
• The gangstas being evaporated and leaving all of their jewelry
• Yahoo! local maps… this was 2006, after all
• Don’t shove a pistol down the back of your jeans, trust me
• The door lock bit was genius
• “I’ll handle that in a minute, but right now I need to find out what happened to the duck.”
• That’s one very calmly crashed movie
• “Zombies!”
• It’s a bad movie to be a hang glider
• Chris Eliot returns to the series but in a new character
• Could’ve done without the poop scene
• Yes, Robby, war IS cool!
• The Michael Jackson impersonator is back
• “I haven’t lost anyone yet.” “You lost Robby.”
• Saw devices make it hard to hug
• Fake eye!
• “Enjoy your purple nurple Tom!”
• Baby Jigsaw
• This Oprah-Tom Cruise ending is the very definition of “padding”