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Scary 4 bogged down

By this time, you should already know the Scary Movie drill after the three previous movies. Take a few of the biggest blockbuster movies of the last few years, throw out all the rules of logic or taste, and go to town making fun of them.

By this time, you should already know the Scary Movie drill after the three previous movies. Take a few of the biggest blockbuster movies of the last few years, throw out all the rules of logic or taste, and go to town making fun of them. Director David Zucker (Airplane! and Police Squad) was brought on board to revive the Scary Movie franchise, and he had a lot of source material to pull from, such as War of the Worlds, The Grudge, The Village, the Saw films, and most likely added after production started, Brokeback Mountain. However, what he came up with was a film that had ideas in the right place but can only be enjoyed by a mindless teenager.

The flick gets bogged down way too much with bad physical humour - people getting hit in the head repeatedly for laughs - and even more gross-out bathroom humour, which really takes away from the sharp, verbal and visual satire. It doesn't take long for this type of comedy to get played-out and tedious. It's a shame that all of the more clever bits tend to get bogged down with obvious laughs included to try to reach the brainless masses. A lot of the funniest gags are given away in the commercials and trailer, and they aren't nearly funny when you're expecting them.

The only bright light is Anna Faris, who has gotten to the point - by being in better films - where she has enough of a sense of comic timing to make even the dumbest gag work better with her reaction.

The lowest of the low is Leslie Nielsen, who makes his second appearance as the President of the United States, and his only contribution is telling ethnic jokes at "The Un," and re-enacting the famed Bush scene from Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

But what is truly scary is that Hollywood should deliver enough bad movies in the next few years to guarantee that David Zucker's dumb comedy legacy will never end.

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