You’re in trouble when a comedy opens with a mirthless sketch (sending up Saw) featuring American celebrities mostly unrecognisable to British audiences (basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and TV pundit Dr Phil). The fourth Scary Movie then proceeds to weave together limp skits on The Grudge, The Village and War Of The Worlds, with tipped-in stabs at the not-exactly-scary Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain.
Director David Zucker, still in career wilderness, has Leslie Nielsen’s President to do a very tasteless 9/11 Bush routine and makes room for cameo rappers who aren’t funny but can now brag to their crews that they’re movie stars. Anna Faris, reaching the get-me-out-of-this-franchise crunch Steve Guttenberg was in after the fourth or fifth Police Academy, and Craig Bierko – who does an okay Tom Cruise-on-Oprah imitation – deserve better. And so do you.
