Scary Movie 4

Scary Movie 4 is the fourth film of the Scary Movie franchise and is directed by David Zucker, written by Jim Abrahams, Craig Mazin and Pat Proft, and produced by Craig Mazin and Robert K. Weiss. It is distributed by The Weinstein Company via its Dimension Films unit in the U.S., and internationally by Buena Vista Distribution (Miramax). It was released on April 14, 2006.

Short synopsis

Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back as the lovable, dim-witted Cindy Campbell and her self-serving, sex-crazed pal Brenda Meeks respectively. They are joined this time around by Craig Bierko as the cute, but utterly clueless, Tom Ryan. Together, they battle to save the world from a ruthless alien invasion. Cindy moves in next to Tom because she's taking care of an old lady. She later finds out the house is haunted by a little boy and goes on a quest to find out who killed him and why. Also, Alien "triPods" are invading the world and Cindy has to uncover the identity of the young boy's murderer in order to stop them.

Parodies

The movies/shows/objects officially spoofed:

• Saw - The opening scene with Shaquille O'Neal and Phil McGraw and the villain Jigsaw on the TV. It was also in a bathroom. Adam and Dr.Lawrence were in the same setting and in the same trap in Saw.
• Saw II - The Venus Headtraps worn by Cindy and Brenda, and the "Key behind your eye" part of the trap.
• The Village - The old-world country scene.
• The Grudge - Main Parody.
• War of the Worlds - Main Parody.
• Million Dollar Baby - Cindy's boxing match with a female Mike Tyson.
• Brokeback Mountain - The scene with the two men in the tent
• Hustle & Flow - Cindy's first marriage (very short).
• Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo - In the beginning, the cat clutches Tom's penis, similar to the cat that clutched T.J.'s
• The Oprah Winfrey Show - At the end of the film, it mocks the Tom Cruise "jumping on couch" incident.
• Shaun of the Dead - The scene of beating up the zombies.
• Final Destination - James Earl Jones getting hit by a bus while delivering Morgan Freeman's closing lines from War of the Worlds was a send-up of Terry's death.

Plot

Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil wake up chained in a bathroom with only two minutes to escape as their host, Jigsaw, reveals the room is being filled with a nerve gas. After a few tries, Shaq manages to make a successive free throw with a huge rock in order to get the saw down to cut off their legs. However, Dr. Phil ends up sawing off the wrong foot, thereby remaining chained as they die.

The story begins when Cindy Campbell visits her ex-brother-in-law Tom Logan (Charlie Sheen), who is helping her in her healthcare profession. However, in spite of being in a relationship with three girls (from The Girls Next Door on E!), Logan tries to kill himself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. But he accidentally ingested Viagra pills, resulting in him tumbling over a balustrade and landing on his erect penis, dying a painful death. Later, Cindy receives a tour of creepy "Grudge House" by the healthcare supervisor, who tries to hide the supernatural stuff caused by the The Grudge Boy before Cindy takes the job of caring for the house's incapacitated owner Mrs. Norris (Cloris Leachman).

Meanwhile, Cindy's neighbor Tom Ryan (Craig Bierko), in a depressed state since his divorce, quits his job as a crane operator at the docks. At a bar afterwards he runs into Mahalik (Anthony Anderson) and CJ (Kevin Hart), who have started a homosexual relationship since they took a trip in the mountain. Tom gets home, where his ex-wife (Molly Shannon) has just arrived with his children, Robbie and Rachel, who both resent him. Later that day, after accidentally sponge bathing Mrs. Norris with her own urine, Cindy notices the strange events going on in the house, facing the Grudge Boy.

The next morning she confides in Tom about the events of the previous night, which leads to a conversation about their past relationships. Cindy has a flashback to her first marriage, showing a big African-American man cussing her out, and then another to her second marriage, to the death of her husband George (Simon Rex) when during her last boxing match against Tiffany Stone, snaps his neck in a freak accident.

As the two share a kiss, the sky suddenly goes stormy and mostly everything stops working. Tom goes to investigate as a a gigantic object called triPods emerges to play 80s music before switching to the "Destroy Humanity" playlist, transforming into a mobile weapon that vaporizes the humans into ash with only their clothes left intact. Cindy runs back into her house and finds the Grudge Boy again. They began talking in "Japanese" (actually random Asian words that are brand names and "buzz words" such as Sony, Mitsubishi, and Fujitsu). She is told by the ghost boy that she can find the answer to the alien attack when she finds the boy's killer and his father's heart, giving her directions to his father's location with writing on the wall but Cindy couldn't read them so they transformed into a Yahoo map so that Cindy could read it. Tom splits up with Cindy and flees with his kids.

The scene then changes to the President Baxter Harris (Leslie Nielsen) being informed that aliens are attacking while sitting in Edna R. Penhall Elementary School, listening to a book being read about a duck; when his aide Jamison (Alonzo Bodden) comes, he sits motionless, wanting to hear the rest of the story. When Jamison explains that he read the book before and the duck dies, Baxter spews the milk he drank on the kids. Upon a mentioning that their parents might be dead, the kids also spew milk on Baxter. After mentionings that Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy aren't real that cases the children to violently riot as a result, Baxter tries to go on to another story which he mistakenly called "Rumpelforeskin". When Jamison takes him out of the classroom, Baxter tells Jamison to remind him to sign the abortion bill after admitting he just doesn't get children.

Cindy runs into Brenda Meeks (Regina Hall), who was though to have been dead and now a local reporter, at a downed plane and together they manage to find the last working car and follow the directions of the ghost boy. Upon taking a car from someone, Cindy and Brenda drive past Mahalik and CJ who've mistaken some of the slow-moving survivors of the alien attack as zombies. Tom and the children continue to travel as some people threaten him, using his gun to get their attention before being forced to submit to losing the car. Back at the White House, President Harris is being briefed about the duck by Jamison as Homeland Security's Harper (Bryan Callen) comes in with an eye-witness to the alien attack. She states that the triPods are indestructible and describes the weapon used by the triPods as a laser that "causes people's clothes to fly off people."

Following the instructions by the Grudge Boy, Cindy and Brenda come across a village a century behind modern times. After unsuccessfully trying to steal clothes off some villagers, they take some from a laundry basket and attempt to fit in. Unfortunately, they are captured by the guards and are taken into a court to decide their fate. Henry Hale (Bill Pullman), the head of the village, rules that Cindy and Brenda may stay in the village, but they may never leave.

At an emergency session of the UN, and a round of horribly inappropriate jokes, President Harris reveals a weapon made to combat the aliens. Scientists have taken the lasers used by the triPods, which kill the people but leave their clothes behind, and modified it to have the opposite effect in hopes of fighting back. The members of the UN get an unexpected, and quite unwelcome, demonstration when President Harris accidentally hits the switch and is soon standing in front of all the delegates, completely unaware that he is totally naked. It’s not long before the entire UN is stark naked and panic ensues as Harper escorts the President out of the UN.

Tom and his children run into a battle between the US military and triPods. Robbie decides to join the fight, excited by the graphic violence, running away from Tom. While Tom tries to dissuade him, Michael Jackson (who has gathered a bunch of children) tries to persuade Rachel to come with him, but Tom manages to stop her in time as they and the children run into the woods as Jackson is zapped by the triPod's heat ray; reverting to a previous look before revealing his true form - a balding middle-aged black man - as the a fourth blast destroys him totally, leaving only his nose. Tom and his daughter flee into a house protected by Oliver (Michael Madsen, who is telling them that they should make their own tripods ("Ours will have FOUR legs"). Soon, Tom and Rachel are captured by a triPod.

That night, the village is attacked by Those We Don't Speak Of, however it is discovered that they are Old Lady Henderson and Pigface Joe in costumes. Next door, Henry is stabbed in the chest by the mentally challenged Ezekiel (Chris Elliott). Henry reveals to Cindy and Brenda that he is the father of the Grudge Boy, who was killed at Cindy's boxing match when during the freak accident, the boy was crushed under the weight of Don King. He tells Cindy that only she has the power to defeat the triPods. But before Henry reveals how, he is stabbed again by Ezekiel as the other villagers arrive, answering Brenda that Ezekiel got out of jail by his equally mentally challenged brother, the sheriff. At that point, Cindy and Brenda get captured by the Command triPod.

The characters wake up in the bathroom from the opening, with Cindy and Brenda wearing "Venus Fly Traps" and Tom a device that would shoot a large dildo into his anus. Jigsaw appears on a monitor on the wall, and tells them they have 60 seconds to get the devices off before they die. Eventually, Cindy figures out (after much prompting) that she has to get the key from behind her eye, which she does with ease, because the key was behind a glass eye she got due to a "bad bar fight in '96". Cindy frees them from their traps, and Tom's kids come down from the ceiling, about to be sliced into bits unless he holds onto a rope, leaving him open to another torture device called the Nut Cracker, which gives him various punishments such as kicking his crotch, and giving him a purple nurple and a wet willy and then a iron maiden-like contraption that would kill him but save his kids. Moments before their deaths, Cindy finds photos in the toilet of Jigsaw with Henry's wife and the Grudge Boy, realizing that Jigsaw was the ghost boy's biological father, and the entire invasion was revenge for his son's death. But after seeing how far Tom would go to save his children's lives when, Jigsaw cancels the invasion and allows them to leave after forcefully apologizing for the killing of millions as the other TriPods are deactivated. Nine months later, Brenda gives birth to her love child with Jigsaw's brother, Zoltar, CJ and Mahalik resume their homosexual relationship, and President Baxter Harris is seen sleeping with a duck as James Earl Jones narrates mankind's victor before getting run over by a passing bus.

A five minute epilogue show month after that Tom appears on Oprah, acting crazy for attention with Oprah (played by Debra Wilson). Tom runs around the studio, does backflips (performed by David Leighton), swings across the studio, and chews/rips apart one of the couch cushions. Cindy Campbell walks in and gets thrown by Tom off the stage. Tom then breaks Oprah's hands and wrists, smashes a chair over her head, runs towards and puts his mouth over the camera lens as the screen goes black.

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $40.2 million,^[1] the third best opening weekend of the Scary Movie franchise. It has the best Easter weekend opening weekend ever, beating Panic Room which made $30.1 million in its opening and also the second best April opening, only $2 million behind Anger Management's record.

As of October 18, 2006, the film has grossed a total of $90,710,620 at the United States box office and $178,262,620 worldwide.

Critical reception

The film received generally mixed reviews from critics. As of August 2008, the film holds a 38% approval rating on rottentomatoes.com. Though for the most part it was received less favorably than the first three Scary Movies, with only the second one getting worse reviews, The New York Times' review was relatively positive: "Organized on the principle of parody, not plot..., it's an exercise in lowbrow postmodernism, a movie-movie contraption more nuts than Charlie Kaufman's gnarliest fever dream."^[2]

Ratings

• In the USA, the official MPAA rating is PG-13 for crude and sexual humour throughout, some comic violence, and language.
• In the UK, the official BBFC rating is 15 for strong language and moderate sex references.

Cast

Shooting locations

This is the third Scary Movie filmed in Vancouver. The others were 1 and 3.

References

External links

• Official Website
• "Nearly" Official Website with an Exclusive Interview
• Movies.com
• Scary Movie 4 at the Internet Movie Database
• Scary Movie 4 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Scary Movie 4 at Metacritic

• Scary Movie 4 at Yahoo! Movies
• Movie Review - Scary Movie 4
• Detailed Comparison between PG-13 and Unrated