The Scary Movie gang is back with send-ups of "War of the Worlds," "The Grudge," "The Village," "Saw" and "Saw II," "Million Dollar Baby" and much more. Legendary comedy director David Zucker ("Airplane!," the "Naked Gun" franchise, "Scary Movie 3," and "Ruthless People") and producer Bob Weiss reunite to take aim at some of the best fright films, the latest box office hits, music, current events, pop culture, and your favorite celebrities. Anna Faris and Regina Hall are back as the loveable, dim-witted Cindy Campbell and her self-serving, sex-crazed pal, Brenda, respectively - joined this time around by Craig Bierko ("Cinderella Man"), as the cute-but-utterly clueless Tom Ryan. Together, they battle to save the world from a ruthless alien invasion. And the outrageous celebrity cameos include: Carmen Electra, Shaquille O'Neal, Dr. Phil, Bill Pullman, Chris Elliott, Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, rappers Chingy and Lil' John, Leslie Nielsen returning as our fearless Commander in Chief, plus many, many more surprises.

Like each of its predecessors Scary Movie 4 is the kind of slightly amusing film that you will likely see once and never really want to see again. The simplest of the reasons for only seeing it once is the jokes really only make you laugh the first time and even then not really that hard. I am sorry making fun of Tom Cruise is as about as easy as playing golf with holes the size of swimming pools and it really is not that much more of a stretch to include many modern day horror movies in your firing range as well because they are so bad sometimes they make fun of themselves. The movie did have the slight chuckle the fun little moments because they are very up to date and are making fun of things relevant to us right now. So here lies the problem with all these silly, stupid parodies and spoof movies is that three years down the road are we going to find the same relevance to the jokes that we only find slightly amusing right now and are we going to want to hear them anymore. It only took me a month to get sick and tired of hearing Brokeback Mountain jokes and of course Scary Movie 4 doesn’t have the intelligence to know that most of us right now do not want to hear another Brokeback joke and the movie even takes pot shots at the film which in all reality is probably easier than taking pot shots at Tom Cruise.

So therein lies the problem spoofs and parodies are fun and can be funny, but you need something comedic that will be able to stand the test of pop culture moving on to new targets if you want the movie to become timeless like say Airplane. The problem is now days movies don’t intermingle classic comedy moments in with their movies rather they intermingle potty humor and fart jokes. It’s like take an already slightly dirty shirt and tossing it in a mud hole to try and clean it, it’s a paradox that seems to escape the studios completely. These movies are engineered for the teen crowd that hasn’t yet gotten tired of the same old fart joke told over and over with some slight comedy and some spoof humor on pop culture for the rest of us which make the film watchable but only once and that just barely.

When David Zucker took over the helm for Scary Movie 3 it was like a shot in the arm for the series that had easily grown stale just after two movies. Unlike the Wayans brothers who know nothing but silly potty humor he was able to transform the series from just a scary movie spoof movie to a movie that was able to take pot shots at all of Hollywood and the tripe that manages to get released. But the problem is I think in the 25 years since Airplane he has forgotten what is funny and what is not and instead he has taken the easy way out with the Scary Movie’s and just falls back on the potty humor. The movie has moments of brilliance is the sad thing like the Dr. Phil/Shaq scene which is truly inventive and new and something that wasn’t as easy as the Tom Cruise/Oprah scene that a four year old could have thought up or the endless parade of parodies on good movies like Million Dollar Baby which made no sense and weren’t funny in the least. The cast is your typical Saturday Night Live kind of crew trying to make it big from Molly Shannon to Craig Bierko and nobody stands out just like the jokes. See it once as cheaply as possible because you don’t really want to spend to much money on a movie like this then forget it like all of the other Scar Movie’s that came before it.

Grade: C-