Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Scary Movie 4

2006 film by David Zucker From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scary Movie 4
Remove ads

Scary Movie 4 is a 2006 American parody film directed by David Zucker from a screenplay by Craig Mazin, Jim Abrahams, and Pat Proft, based on a story by Mazin. It is the sequel to Scary Movie 3 (2003) and the fourth installment in the Scary Movie film series. The film stars Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman, Anthony Anderson, Carmen Electra, Chris Elliott, Kevin Hart, Cloris Leachman, Michael Madsen, Dr. Phil McGraw, Leslie Nielsen, Shaquille O'Neal, and Molly Shannon.

Quick facts Directed by, Screenplay by ...

Scary Movie 4 premiered at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square Theater in New York City, New York on April 10, 2006, and was released in the United States on April 14, by Dimension Films. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but grossed $178 million on a $40 million budget.

A standalone sequel, Scary Movie 5, was released in 2013.

Remove ads

Plot

Summarize
Perspective

Shaquille O'Neal and Dr. Phil wake up to find themselves chained to pipes in a bathroom. A villainous Puppet appears on a television screen and reveals that the room is slowly filling with nerve gas. To escape, Shaquille must shoot a basket to obtain two hacksaws, which Dr. Phil realizes are intended for their feet. However, Dr. Phil saws off the wrong foot and faints, leaving both to die.

Meanwhile, Cindy Campbell visits her brother-in-law, Tom Logan, in New York City. Her husband, George, has died, and her nephew, Cody, is enrolled in a military academy, leaving her heartbroken and lonely. Tom's attempted suicide results in him ingesting viagra, which greatly swells his penis and causes his death when he falls off the railing.

Afterwards, Cindy takes a job caring for Mrs. Norris, who lives in a haunted house. Next door is Tom Ryan, who runs into George's friends Mahalik and CJ and learns about their homosexual one-night stand. He is greeted at home by the arrival of his estranged children, Robbie and Rachel.

The following day, Cindy bonds with Tom, confiding to him about George's death in a fateful boxing match. They both realize their newfound love but are interrupted by a gigantic tripod that starts vaporizing the city's residents.

Cindy converses in what appears to be Japanese (but in reality is just a dialogue composed of random Japanese terms) with the haunted house's ghost, a silent boy with pale skin, learning that the answer to the invasion is his father's heart. While Tom leaves the city with his children, Cindy reunites with her friend, Brenda Meeks, who is inexplicably alive after she died in the previous film. Following the Japanese boy's directions, they head to the countryside and end up in a mysterious, isolated community. They are captured and put on trial, headed by Henry Hale. The result allows them to live, but never to leave the village.

Meanwhile, there is an emergency U.N. meeting, headed by the eccentric U.S. President Baxter Harris, who is reluctant to stop reading "My Pet Duck." The meeting goes awry when a malfunctioning alien weapon renders everyone naked.

Tom and his children drive in a war between the U.S. military and the aliens. Excited by the conflict, Robbie runs away, while the tripod takes Tom and Rachel. Back in the village, Henry is killed by the village loon, Ezekiel, who reveals to Cindy that he fathered the Japanese boy, who was killed during Cindy's boxing match.

Cindy and Brenda are soon taken by the tripod and sent to the bathroom seen in the prologue. They get stuck in the Venus flytrap from Saw II. Cindy manages to get through the puppet's challenge but is threatened with the safety of Tom and his children, who are put in traps. Looking at a toilet with the "heart" nearby, Cindy realizes that the Puppet, through Henry's wife, is the true biological father of the Japanese boy.

Seeing how far Tom would go to save his children, the Puppet, who realizes his mistakes, apologizes for the invasion and releases them. Robbie and Rachel successfully return to their mother, who is revealed to have married a much older man. Brenda also becomes romantically involved with the Puppet's human brother, Zoltar.

An epilogue set one month afterwards, narrated by James Earl Jones who is subsequently hit by a bus, reveals Brenda's giving birth to her child with Zoltar, Mahalik and CJ resuming their relationship, and President Harris being content with his duck. Meanwhile, Tom appears in The Oprah Winfrey Show and wildly confesses his love for Cindy by jumping around, throwing Cindy across the room, then breaking Oprah's wrists and hitting her with a chair afterwards.

Remove ads

Cast

Cameo appearances

Remove ads

Release

Home media

The film was released on DVD on August 15, 2006, in theatrical (83 minutes), and unrated (89 minutes) editions with deleted scenes, bloopers, and outtakes. About 1,581,754 units were sold, bringing in $22,308,989 in revenue.[3]

Reception

Summarize
Perspective

Box office

In its opening weekend, the film grossed a total of $40.2 million,[5] the third best opening weekend of the Scary Movie franchise. It has the best Easter weekend opening weekend ever, beating Panic Room which made $30.1 million in its opening and also the second best April opening, only $2 million behind Anger Management's record. As of October 18, 2006, the film has grossed a total of $90,710,620 at the United States box office and $178,262,620 worldwide.

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 34% of 126 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 4.60/10. The site's consensus states, "Sure to inspire a few chuckles, but not enough to compensate for the recycled material from its predecessors."[6] On Metacritic, film has an average of 40 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[7] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "C+" on a scale of A+ to F.[8]

Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post stated that while "Scary Movie 4 never takes you close to death by laughter [...] it's funny enough to turn the hands on your watch much more quickly than you can believe."[9] Nathan Lee of The New York Times' described the film as being "organized on the principle of parody, not plot, [...] it's an exercise in lowbrow postmodernism, a movie-movie contraption more nuts than Charlie Kaufman's gnarliest fever dream. It's cleverly stupid."[10]

Accolades

The film won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actress (Carmen Electra, also in Date Movie).

Remove ads

Sequel

Main article: Scary Movie 5

A sequel titled Scary Movie 5, was released in 2013.

See also

References

External links

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads