Some movies are like a halfway filled gas tank. The part of tank that has the gas keeps the car rolling, but the empty part doesn't help the car move at all.
Such is the instance with Scary Movie 4. The first half of the film is completely void of laughs and relies on the been-there-done-that slapstick/goofy violence you'd expect to see on a re-run of a Three Stooges episode on PBS. However, the second half of the movie has quite a few laughs and had enough energy to keep me interested in the movie, but the movie needed a refill for the last few minutes, as it runs out of gas before it reaches the finish line.
This time around the plots of recent movies such as War of the Worlds, The Grudge, Million Dollar Baby, Saw, The Village, and quite a few others are intertwined to form a smudge of a comedic plot. Why explain it? Trying to compress the plot into a tiny paragraph is like trying to squash a block of cement in a vice. It just can't be done.
I don't know why Scary Movie 4 has to keep on recycling the same slap stick jokes that have been in the previous movie. The only laughs in this film come from spoken one-liners. It's as if they had no other funny dialogue to come up with, and added fart and ball jokes instead that reminded me of the previous bomb this year, Date Movie. Another problem Scary Movie 4 seems to have is a lack of knowledge of when to stop. There are many laughs, but many of the same jokes are played on for such a long time and are repeated that you feel ashamed that you laughed at them when they started. It doesn't know when to quit.
What keeps the movie alive the most is, like in Scary Movie 3, Leslie Nielsen playing the President of the United States. He again shows us how much he is needed for these kinds of movies, and there is a very funny scene in which he doesn't know what to say during a speech to the United Nations.
If you liked Scary Movie 3, most likely you'll like Scary Movie 4. I don't think anyone who found many recycled jokes in Scary Movie 3 will find anything fresh here. After all, do the movies Scary Movie 4 spoofs have much originality, even when played seriously?
