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What do you get when you mix up Saw, The Grudge, The Village and War of the Worlds — and then throw in a little Brokeback Mountain and Million Dollar Baby?

You get Scary Movie 4, a throw-it-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-sticks onslaught of potty jokes, puns, celebrity cameos, J-horror, and j-high sophistication and wit. You also get laughs, but not nearly as many as you’d hoped.

Overseen by David Zucker, The Airplane!/Naked Gun parodist who took over the Scary Movie franchise with No. 3, SM4 brings back Anna Faris as the nubile nincompoop Cindy Campbell, sent to take care of an infirm hag (Cloris Leachman) in a Japanese-style house.

When a spooky kid materializes at the top of the stairs, Cindy freaks.

Then she starts talking Japanese with the ghost boy: a string of sushi orders and brand-name products (Nikon, Toyota) accompanied with subtitles, of course. How do you say ha-ha?

Craig Bierko gets the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds role, a lumbering dock worker with a divorced wife, a moody teenage son, and a cute little girl that he keeps knocking over, electrocuting and crushing with heavy objects.

Tom (yup, no subtlety here) lives next door to the old woman, and he and caregiver Cindy hit it off. When the intergalactic tripods (yes, there’s an iPod joke) start destroying the town, Tom and his kids go running — into the countryside, and into the plotlines of several recent box office hits.

When Zucker was at the top of his game, the parodies teemed with sight gags, goofball signage and throwaway shtick. It wasn’t just dopey Leslie Nielsen front and centre, it was the sublime idiocy going on all around him. With Scary Movie 4 — which has Nielsen playing a dim-witted U.S. president first seen in a kindergarten class listening to a story about ducks (draw your own parallels) — there are none of those satisfying background gags.

Carmen Electra gets the plum job of a blind Village resident who unwittingly goes to the toilet in front of her entire community.

Bill Pullman does William Hurt, Chris Eliott is The Village’s village idiot, and Charlie Sheen does a Viagra spoof. Shaquille O’Neal and Dr. Phil open Scary Movie 4 with an achingly unfunny couple of minutes of severed limbs and errant hoop shots.[[In-content Ad]]

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