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Scary Movie 4 (Unrated) (HD DVD)
The Weinstein Company // Unrated // December 19, 2006 // Region 0
List Price: $29.95 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"It is a stupid movie. It's always been stupid, and it always will be stupid."
"I think a lot of critics get confused. They watch these movies and wonder where the satire is...what the point is. We don't do satire, and we have no point."
"There's a difference between parody and satire."
"Right... We take scenes from serious movies and basically reproduce them exactly, but the people in them are stupid. That's what we do."
"I think that's probably accurate."
"There is no larger satirical point. And we don't do what we deem film criticism. We don't point out how stupid or illogical the movies we're spoofing are because nobody really cares."
- Director David Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writer/producer Craig Mazin on Scary Movie 4
- or -
"This was a funny scene because it involved pee."
Take your pick.
So, yeah. I could try to go through
the whole DVD reviewer spiel and scribble down a pretentious overanalysis of...I don't know, themes or whatever, but it's Scary Movie 4. Those snippets from the disc's audio commentary are really all the review you need. You know what kind of movie it is -- most of the guys behind Airplane!, the Naked Gun flicks, and...hey! Scary Movie 3 goatfuck together scenes from a few summer tentpoles, cranking away at a gatling gun of pop culture references, slapstick, and dick-fart-boobs-'n-ass jokes for 80 minutes.
A bunch of the usual folks pop up again: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, Carmen Electra, Leslie Nielsen, Chris Elliott, Simon Rex, and Charlie Sheen. Cinderella Man's Craig Bierko hops into a lead role as a Tom Cruise knockoff, and the movie also features cameos by Bill Pullman, Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Dr. Phil, Shaq, Dave Attell, and a half-battalion of rappers. Together, in comedic unity, they skewer War of the Worlds, The Grudge, The Village, and Saw, clicking the blinker and briefly veering off into Million Dollar Baby, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and, of course, Brokeback Mountain.
No, it's not a triumph of the human spirit or anything. Boobs jiggle, there's a fatal Viagra overdose followed by a flashback with third grade-level double entendres about nuts, Carmen Electra strips down to a corset and has diarrhea, Mike Tyson chomps off ears, Michael Jackson apparently molests kids and has had a bunch of plastic surgery, and lots and lots of people get conked on the head. Fade to black. Roll credits. Most of the gags fall flat, but Zucker and his pals lob out enough jokes to keep a steady flow of laughs. I don't think I'd say it's funny, exactly, but it's funny enough.
This HD DVD sports the unrated version of Scary Movie 4, and some of the extensions from the theatrical cut include a slow-motion
pillow fight with Hugh Hefner's harem, a longer Brokeback Mountain spoof ('cause gerbils and hints at anal sex are apparently a no-no for a PG-13 flick), a peek at Cindy's boxing nickname, more graphic photos of awesome-ghost-faced-Japanese-tyke's mom en flagrante midgeto, and mock-Tom Cruise shoving his head into mock-Oprah's nethers.
Video: Although there have been a smattering o' reports about the first wave of releases from The Weinstein Company sputtering and stuttering in HD DVD players when they're first loaded, I didn't run into any hiccups with Scary Movie 4.
The movie was shot with the same Panavision Genesis high-def cameras that were used for Superman Returns, and the 1.85:1-ish flick has been encoded using MPEG-4. Some very light video noise creeps in at times, and there was something about the palette that seemed just a little off, especially the artificial look of its fleshtones. Other than that, the image is crisp and nicely detailed, not leaving much else to gripe about.
Audio: The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio doesn't rank much higher than okay. There's a slight edginess to the dialogue, and although the rear speakers and subwoofer get a fair amount of use, it's not really teeming with rumbling, foundation-threatening bass or particularly aggressive surrounds. Not disappointing, exactly. Just kinda average.
There's also a French dub along with subtitles in English and Spanish.
Supplements: My two favorite extras on this disc both just cram director David Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writer/producer Craig Mazin into a room with a few mics, winds 'em up, and lets 'em go. Much more infectiously funny than the movie they made, they crack up about all the stuff that fails miserably, note how the Saw knockoff bathroom set looked so good that the Saw producers of bought it for their sequel,
quip about the inhumanly short schedule, say something so nut-rageous that the Weinsteins' legal eagles bleeped it out, point out the genius of replacing peeing sounds with farting sounds, and debate whether or not there's any empirical evidence that The Simpsons is good. Just a ridiculous amount of fun, and a thirty five minute interview with 'em is pretty much just more of the same.
The disc's reel of deleted scenes doesn't really have deleted scenes so much, with fifteen brief extensions-slash-alternate gags that run thirteen and a half minutes in total, including some different iPod jokes, Cindy being swallowed by her turtleneck, and Leslie Nielsen shredding the Constitution. Nothing that great, but for some reason, a really low-rent shot of Cindy being carried around by an off-screen vulture while invading 'the village' made me laugh out loud. I know, and I'm sorry. Zucker and company serve up optional commentary for this footage too. There's also a seven minute blooper reel with the usual botched lines, spontaneous bits of laughter, and Lil' Jon making me wish I had a high-powered rifle and easy access to a bell tower in L.A.
I really liked the eight and a half minute look at the movie's digital effects, which were created under the gun with no time and no money while still having to look reasonably convincing next to the $150 million movies that are being spoofed. Most of the other featurettes are a waste, including a routine clip about the cast (15 min.), five and a half minutes of rappers talking about how amazing and wonderful it was to be cast in Scary Movie 4 (yea-yuh!), a couple of clips about Jerry Zucker's distinctive laugh and his approach to comedy, and five tedious minutes of the cast teasing an interviewer. Other extras include seven minutes of Craig Bierko improvising -- something that happens less frequently than you'd think in a Zucker flick -- and a high-def theatrical trailer.
Conclusion: Nah, I don't think I'll be writing a conclusion. I can type "Rent It" and wrap bold and italics around it in lieu of some sort of final summary, though. Rent It. See?
"I think a lot of critics get confused. They watch these movies and wonder where the satire is...what the point is. We don't do satire, and we have no point."
"There's a difference between parody and satire."
"Right... We take scenes from serious movies and basically reproduce them exactly, but the people in them are stupid. That's what we do."
"I think that's probably accurate."
"There is no larger satirical point. And we don't do what we deem film criticism. We don't point out how stupid or illogical the movies we're spoofing are because nobody really cares."
- Director David Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writer/producer Craig Mazin on Scary Movie 4
- or -
"This was a funny scene because it involved pee."
Take your pick.
So, yeah. I could try to go through
the whole DVD reviewer spiel and scribble down a pretentious overanalysis of...I don't know, themes or whatever, but it's Scary Movie 4. Those snippets from the disc's audio commentary are really all the review you need. You know what kind of movie it is -- most of the guys behind Airplane!, the Naked Gun flicks, and...hey! Scary Movie 3 goatfuck together scenes from a few summer tentpoles, cranking away at a gatling gun of pop culture references, slapstick, and dick-fart-boobs-'n-ass jokes for 80 minutes. A bunch of the usual folks pop up again: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Anthony Anderson, Kevin Hart, Carmen Electra, Leslie Nielsen, Chris Elliott, Simon Rex, and Charlie Sheen. Cinderella Man's Craig Bierko hops into a lead role as a Tom Cruise knockoff, and the movie also features cameos by Bill Pullman, Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Dr. Phil, Shaq, Dave Attell, and a half-battalion of rappers. Together, in comedic unity, they skewer War of the Worlds, The Grudge, The Village, and Saw, clicking the blinker and briefly veering off into Million Dollar Baby, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and, of course, Brokeback Mountain.
No, it's not a triumph of the human spirit or anything. Boobs jiggle, there's a fatal Viagra overdose followed by a flashback with third grade-level double entendres about nuts, Carmen Electra strips down to a corset and has diarrhea, Mike Tyson chomps off ears, Michael Jackson apparently molests kids and has had a bunch of plastic surgery, and lots and lots of people get conked on the head. Fade to black. Roll credits. Most of the gags fall flat, but Zucker and his pals lob out enough jokes to keep a steady flow of laughs. I don't think I'd say it's funny, exactly, but it's funny enough.
This HD DVD sports the unrated version of Scary Movie 4, and some of the extensions from the theatrical cut include a slow-motion
pillow fight with Hugh Hefner's harem, a longer Brokeback Mountain spoof ('cause gerbils and hints at anal sex are apparently a no-no for a PG-13 flick), a peek at Cindy's boxing nickname, more graphic photos of awesome-ghost-faced-Japanese-tyke's mom en flagrante midgeto, and mock-Tom Cruise shoving his head into mock-Oprah's nethers. Video: Although there have been a smattering o' reports about the first wave of releases from The Weinstein Company sputtering and stuttering in HD DVD players when they're first loaded, I didn't run into any hiccups with Scary Movie 4.
The movie was shot with the same Panavision Genesis high-def cameras that were used for Superman Returns, and the 1.85:1-ish flick has been encoded using MPEG-4. Some very light video noise creeps in at times, and there was something about the palette that seemed just a little off, especially the artificial look of its fleshtones. Other than that, the image is crisp and nicely detailed, not leaving much else to gripe about.
Audio: The Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio doesn't rank much higher than okay. There's a slight edginess to the dialogue, and although the rear speakers and subwoofer get a fair amount of use, it's not really teeming with rumbling, foundation-threatening bass or particularly aggressive surrounds. Not disappointing, exactly. Just kinda average.
There's also a French dub along with subtitles in English and Spanish.
Supplements: My two favorite extras on this disc both just cram director David Zucker, producer Robert K. Weiss, and writer/producer Craig Mazin into a room with a few mics, winds 'em up, and lets 'em go. Much more infectiously funny than the movie they made, they crack up about all the stuff that fails miserably, note how the Saw knockoff bathroom set looked so good that the Saw producers of bought it for their sequel,
quip about the inhumanly short schedule, say something so nut-rageous that the Weinsteins' legal eagles bleeped it out, point out the genius of replacing peeing sounds with farting sounds, and debate whether or not there's any empirical evidence that The Simpsons is good. Just a ridiculous amount of fun, and a thirty five minute interview with 'em is pretty much just more of the same. The disc's reel of deleted scenes doesn't really have deleted scenes so much, with fifteen brief extensions-slash-alternate gags that run thirteen and a half minutes in total, including some different iPod jokes, Cindy being swallowed by her turtleneck, and Leslie Nielsen shredding the Constitution. Nothing that great, but for some reason, a really low-rent shot of Cindy being carried around by an off-screen vulture while invading 'the village' made me laugh out loud. I know, and I'm sorry. Zucker and company serve up optional commentary for this footage too. There's also a seven minute blooper reel with the usual botched lines, spontaneous bits of laughter, and Lil' Jon making me wish I had a high-powered rifle and easy access to a bell tower in L.A.
I really liked the eight and a half minute look at the movie's digital effects, which were created under the gun with no time and no money while still having to look reasonably convincing next to the $150 million movies that are being spoofed. Most of the other featurettes are a waste, including a routine clip about the cast (15 min.), five and a half minutes of rappers talking about how amazing and wonderful it was to be cast in Scary Movie 4 (yea-yuh!), a couple of clips about Jerry Zucker's distinctive laugh and his approach to comedy, and five tedious minutes of the cast teasing an interviewer. Other extras include seven minutes of Craig Bierko improvising -- something that happens less frequently than you'd think in a Zucker flick -- and a high-def theatrical trailer.
Conclusion: Nah, I don't think I'll be writing a conclusion. I can type "Rent It" and wrap bold and italics around it in lieu of some sort of final summary, though. Rent It. See?
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