Scary Movie 4... the birds!

I went to see Scary Movie 4 the other day. I have to say, the movie was actually pretty good, despite it's bad reviews. Although in my opinion, the original Scary Movie will always be the #1 pick in my book. The series started wearing thin with Scary Movie 3 (although Leslie Nielson's scenes made up for that), so I went into SM4 with low expectations. It's probably me going in with that perception, that is the reason why I came out of the theatre laughing my ass off (I suppose it doesn't help that I'm easily amused).

The movie is about Cindy Campbell (Anna Farris), much like the other three, and she has become a health care worker where she is assigned to take care of a timid old woman (played by Cloris Leechman) who lives in a house haunted by the ghost of a young Japanese boy. Cindy can't resist a paranormal investigation so she decides to invest paranormally. On her journey she meets Tom Ryan (played by Craig Bierko, the man who turned down the Friends rold of Chandler Bing) in a War of the Worlds-type role as a divorced father trying to take care of his two more-intelligent kids. His divorcee is played by Molly "Superstar" Shannon. Cindy also catches up with Brenda (Regina Hall) even though she had died in the previous movie (but, being a zany comedy, I guess continuity is the least important matter). The two girls get involved in some Amish comunity terrorized by fake monsters. Eventually, she catches up with Tom and his family, and they get held hostage by two clown-like aliens who plan on world domination. I don't know if it would be wise for me to blurt out the ending, and I didn't put a poiler warning. Let me just say that, while the movie itself was a good and funny, the ending was, by far, very much a huge burden to take. A major letdown to what could have possibly been a nice 4th entry in a comical series. Also, the Operah Winfrey bit at the end of the movie (oops!) was so faulty and tedious, that I don't understand why it wasn't left on the cutting room floor. It could have been snipped out and would not have been missed (and hey, that would have meant an extra special feature for the DVD!). Overall, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'll give SM4 a 7.2, because I'm not a harsh critc (or am I?). Hopefully this is the last of the series. A Scary Movie 5 just would be uncalled for. We get the point, a movie that pokes fun at B-horror films. But, if I want to see something like that, done better, I'll just watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, thank you very much.