While movies like Airplane! and Naked Gun helped define the joke-a-minute parody school of comedies, it was 2000's horror movie spoof Scary Movie that managed to not only destroy the sub-genre, but also to beckon in way too many lame brained (and quite bad) parodies. And, at the time, you knew that since it managed to pull in a cool one-hundred million at the box office sequels would follow - which brings us to part four.

I'm not going to lie; I hated the first two entries with a passion. In fact, I hate almost everything the Wayans brothers have done since I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and In Living Color (you only have to see trailers for White Chicks and Little Man for proof of their suckage). That's probably why I was pleasantly surprised when Dimension brought in David Zucker and his regular co-writer Pat Proft (two of the guys responsible for this type of movie in the first place) for the third entry. Imagine my bigger surprise when I was actually entertained by it.

Wanting to keep the creative team together (or, as I suspect, planning on a fourth entry when the third went into production), Zucker and Proft are back - as is series star Anna Faris, for a fourth go-around this time taking aim at such movies as Spielberg's War Of The Worlds remake and The Grudge.

Things get off to a silly, but generally okay, start with a Saw spoof that has television celeb Dr. Phil and basketballer Shaquille O'Neal trapped together, from there it's all sorts of throwaway jokes as this time Cindy (Faris) returns this time finding that the house she's a caretaker in is haunted by a ghostly boy. From there she sets out to figure out who killed him only to get caught-up along the way with an alien invasion (and a Tom Cruise parody courtesy of Craig Bierko).

Depending on your taste for this kind of thing (and how often you're willing to forgive a lot of groanable jokes), Scary Movie 4 should make for an okay timewaster. It does offer a few mild chuckles and cameo appearances, but at the same time there's almost too much "meh" sexual innuendo humour and slapstick on hand that it almost gets tiring - seeing Faris' character smacked in the face once might be amusing, but over-and-over again? Plus, the ending is particularly weak and it pulls as the spoofs into a pretty unfunny finish.

Why Faris keeps letting herself get typecast in this type of movie I will never know as she has shown acting chops in Brokeback Mountain, Lost In Translation and Lucky McKee's May - it's almost like she's settled for this type of role. Leslie Nielsen shows-up as the American President (probably as a favour to Zucker for resurrecting his film career with the Naked Gun movies) and gets some of the better moments.

Skippable, but they'll continue making them as long as people keep going to see them or renting them - heck, they've already announced a fifth entry in the series.

Review based on unrated version. (Chris Hartley, 12/14/06)

Directed By: David Zucker.
Written By: Craig Mazin, Jim Abrahams, Pat Proft.

Starring: Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Craig Bierko, Bill Pullman.