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Friday, April 14, 2006
'Scary Movie': Fourth time's the Charmin as slapshtick & potty humor runneth over
If you don't find broadsides against popular movies and pop culture icons in the form of silly sight gags, knockabout slapstick set pieces, bawdy sex comedy and bathroom humor (complete with a soundtrack of muddy flatulence) funny by definition, chances are this is not the comedy for you.
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For the rest of us, this a rapid-fire romp through "War of the Worlds," "Saw," "The Grudge" and "The Village," cut up into skits and pieced back together in some mutant jigsaw puzzle with a few pieces missing, delivers a barrage of low-minded gags with high-spirited energy.
In this fourth installment of the farce franchise, a pasty ghost boy sends returning ditz Cindy Campbell (a breathy blond Anna Faris) on a mission to save the Earth from spidery, tuba-blasting space invaders and a perverted puppet who tests the limits of self actualization when he chains up Dr. Phil and Shaq in his private dungeon.
Faris is as cheerfully clueless as ever, Regina Hall actually dials down her sass in the sex-mad sidekick role and Charlie Sheen achieves slapstick Zen in a short-lived cameo. Co-star Craig Bierko, whose indulgent mugging overplays his gags, could take pointers.
Director David Zucker (who refreshed the flat franchise with "Scary Movie 3") and his hit squad lampoon pop culture detritus from "Brokeback Mountain" and "Million Dollar Baby" to Tom Cruise's hyperactive love fest on "Oprah" (where Bierko's sugar-high overkill hits the target).
The scattershot attack is a pale imitation of his comic sharpshooting on "Airplane" and the "Naked Gun" films, but the cartoonish spirit and rapid-fire pace keeps 'em coming until something hits the target, like the truly wicked swipe at President Bush with Leslie Nielsen as a storybook-loving commander in chief. It's good enough to make this the funniest spoof comedy since ... well, "Scary Movie 3."
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