This is some shit, up with which we will not put.

Scary Movie 4

(2006)

I gave up on the Scary Movie franchise about ten minutes into the first film (I finished watching it, but it was an endurance test). But 4 was on the box, and hey. Maybe David Zucker (first brought on board to direct the third film) had eked some laughs from the terminally gag-challenged material. Jim Abrahams and Pat Proft were on script duty. That had to count for something. But wait… didn’t the Zuckers forsake laughs and turn into rightwing zealots? To the extent that they made a whole “comedy” lambasting Michael Moore (A Christmas Carol)?

SM4 is so lousy, it doesn’t even really merit contempt. It rotates from laugh-free parody to laugh-free parody as if its creators were oblivious to what made Airplane! and The Naked Guns frequently hilarious. Sandwiched into the horror spoof shell (this time taking in J-Horror) are extended riffs on War of the Worlds (Spielberg), The Village, Brokeback Mountain and Saw. The only one that raises a vague smile is a piss-take of Million Dollar Baby’s crucial accident.

The person I feel sorry for in all this is Anna Faris, a natural comedienne who, presumably for financial reasons, felt compelled to persevere through four of these movies (mercifully for her, she is absent from the Weinsteins’ desperate and doomed attempt to resuscitate the franchise this year). In contrast, Craig Bierko (who I can never quite place, except that he approximates an annoying version of Ron Livingstone) seems right at home here. Leslie Nielsen is wheeled on to deliver his usual schtick but he’s woefully under-served, as well as being granted the geriatric indignity of exposing his sagging flesh for the camera. What a trooper.

1/2

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She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

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Django Unchained (2012)
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The result is a giddily hilarious, edge-of-the-seat thrill ride (don’t believe The New York Times review: it is not “altogether more solemn” I can only guess Jeannette Catsoulis didn’t revisit the original in the interven…

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Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
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No time to dilly-dally, Mr Wick.

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The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018)
(SPOILERS) Choosing to make The Girl in the Spider’s Web following the failure of the David Fincher film – well, not a failure per se, but like Blade Runner 2049, it simply cost far too much to justify its inevitably limited returns – was a very bizarre decision on MGM’s part. A decision to reboot, with a different cast, having no frame of reference for the rest of the trilogy unless you checked out the Swedish movies (or read the books, but who does that?); someone actually thought this would possibly do well? Evidently the same execs churning out desperately flailing remakes based on their back catalogue of IPs (Ben-Hur, The Magnificent Seven, Death Wish, Tomb Raider); occasionally there’s creative flair amid the dross (Creed, A Star is Born), but otherwise, it’s the most transparently creatively bankrupt studio there is.

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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
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The MCU Ranked Worst to Best

I think, I ruminate, I plan.

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Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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