The Scary Movie franchise doesn’t have the most glorious track record: The first was shockingly funny, mainly because it went further than any R-rated comedy before it, with gushing semen fountains, braided pubic hair, Carmen Electra’s breast implants being cut out, and Shawn Wayans being impaled through the head with a giant erect penis. Part two deteriorated into lame stoner humor, and, when David Zucker took over the reins for part three, he did what most cinematic observers would not have imagined possible, directing a comedy so annoying it actually made you miss the Wayans brothers.

The fourth installment, however, gets back on track, in large part through the canny casting of the underrated Craig Bierko as a Tom Cruise surrogate in an all-out War of the Worlds parody that makes explicit all the jokes that went around about the original. Meanwhile, Anna Faris returns to spoof Sarah Michelle Gellar in a Grudge parody. The story ultimately leads to a rip on The Village, a movie so ripe for mockery that Zucker doesn’t have to break a sweat. And since Mad magazine has been virtually unreadable since the death of Bill Gaines, the whole rather nicely fills the void - yes, many of the jokes are lame, but there’s a bit involving Bierko and a car’s automatic locking system that is freakin’ genius.

Director Zucker became a Republican after 9/11, so it’s particularly amusing to watch Leslie Nielsen play a bumbling president who makes some very familiar screw-ups. Then again, Bill Gaines was a fan of Ronald Reagan, but Mad never pulled its punches on him either. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Citywide)