Scary Movie 4

The Scary Movie franchise has completely destroyed itself film-wise, it's just unfortunate that continued box office profits will ensure another ridiculous spoof of pictures that just aren't bad enough to be spoofed. Equally retched as the third installment, this time around award-winner "Brokeback Mountain" and commendable films like "The Village" and "War of the Worlds" join proper horror films "Saw" and "The Grudge" in the mockery that makes up for a lack of cleverness with raunchy, out-of-place parody. And believe it when I say the jokes get old quicker than the unbearably long 80-minute running time.

Mockery films can flourish if done properly. The first two Scary Movie films are a good example. The Wayans brothers figured out which films were bad enough or funny enough to warrant a deeper comedic thrashing. The tastelessness fit in with the sexual innuendo of the films, which were then teen-horror sensations like "Scream" and "I Know What You Did Last Summer." It's easy to make fun of Neve Campbell, because of her apparent sex appeal and b-list acting. But making fun of a film like "Brokeback Mountain" simply does not work. There isn't anything to make fun of. The film was a drama, the characters engaging and deep and the plot reasonably unique. It isn't funny to see spoofed versions of the two lead characters, just plain stupid. There's a reason most Oscar-nominees are held in such exalted, free-from-parody status. They're just not funny as parodies. God, I can't say that enough.

The plot, which doesn't deserve to be called such, is a dual-feature loosely intertwined between "War of the Worlds" and "The Grudge." Anna Faris plays Cindy, who learns how to save the world from iPod-playing aliens from a stereotypical Japanese house ghost. She encounters a horrible Tom Cruise mimic (Craig Bierko), and the two go about the business of surviving until the next bad joke or pun. Everything about the film, from the acting, writing and directing is just pure exploitation of a series that has lost its purpose other than taking the audiences' money. Even guest appearances by Leslie Nielson, Shaq, Charlie Sheen and Bill Pullman don't add anything meaningful or funny. It's a shame, because there are plenty of bad films that could use a good beating. Just because a film is popular doesn't mean the audience is going to enjoy seeing it made fun of. Like the nerd-infested playground, certain films are ripe for ridicule. Let's hope Miramax picks the right ones next time.