Dickie Roberts’ Promising Premise Sunk by Sappy Story

What’s the deal with Saturday Night Live alums and their truly sad legacy on the silver screen? After a promising start two decades ago when SNL vets John Belushi, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray were making comedy classics like Animal House, Vacation and Ghost Busters, the current crop of Not Ready for Prime Time Players are producing films such as The Ladies Man, A Night at the Roxbury and, sadly, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star.

The reason this latest David Spade turkey is so lamentable is that the premise had such promise. We’ve all read news stories of the hard luck adult lives of actors we’ve grown to love as child stars. As a jumping off point, it is fairly fertile ground for comedy. Then you fill the movie with cameos of all those screwed up child actors now grown up and it would seem fairly easy to make a movie that tickles the funny bone from start to finish.

And, to be fair, there are laughs a-plenty in the first half of Dickie Roberts. It’s only when that the audience is supposed to genuinely care about Roberts and his predicament that the whole production goes downhill faster than you can say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” The problem is that audiences relate to Spade when he is a devilish troublemaker but can’t make the transition to caring about him as a real person with real problems. He’s just too smarmy, cynical and over the top to waste the effort in empathy.

Among the cameos that are worth a chuckle are appearances by Barry Williams (Greg Brady), Leif Garret, Dustin Diamond (Screech), Danny Bonaduce (Danny Partridge), Alyssa Milano (Samantha from Who’s the Boss) and Emmanuel Lewis (Webster).

When Spade and his gang of miscreant former child stars are cutting up and putting each other down the movie really works. The second half of the film, however, where Roberts tries to get his career on back on track by pretending to be something he is not (you can smell the moral of the story a mile away), the laughs are few and far between.

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star is rated PG-13 for sex-related humor, language and drug references. It is currently playing at Regal Cinemas in Boone.

The SNL Hex

First you have to ask yourself, is there a curse on movies starring Saturday Night Live alums? Probably not. They only really get themselves into trouble when they attempt to stretch a five-minute comedy routine into a 90-minute theatrical release such as It’s Pat or Coneheads.

Despite making some of the lamest comedies of the last decade, Adam Sandler is reportedly now the highest paid actor in Hollywood (take that, Harrison Ford) and Mike Meyers is not far behind. Sandler’s Punch Drunk Love was one of last year’s really good sleepers and Meyers’ Austin Powers trilogy will make him a rich man for a very long time. Myers is also starring in the live film version of Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, a movie that couldn’t possibly be any worse than Jim Carey’s The Grinch.

Speaking of Christmas films, SNL veteran Will Farrell attempts to break the curse this winter with his comedy Elf, about a human baby that mistakenly ends up in the North Pole to grow up among Santa’s toy makers. Eventually he returns to his American roots but, as they say, you can take the boy out of elf-land, but you can’t take the elf-land out of the boy.

So the question remains: What are the best and worst movies ever made starring Saturday Night Live alums? Among my votes for best movies are Groundhog Day (Bill Murray), Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest), and When Harry Met Sally (Billy Crystal). The worst? Anything Eddie Murphy’s done lately and all of the Vacation movies after the first one come to mind without thinking about it too hard.

Movie Viewer Feedback

We want to know what you think are the best and worst movies starring veterans of Saturday Night Live. Email your opinions to: movieguy@mountaintimes.com. We’ll print some of your thoughts on the Movie Review page sometime in the future. And if this feedback thing takes flight we will print more of your opinions on new movies. After all, I’m just one guy, sitting in the movie house for a couple of hours each week and sharing his thoughts through this column. I am not a movie expert or a “critic” per se. From talking to other movie lovers, I may actually be the only person who liked The Hulk and the only one who was disappointed with Open Range. But hey, I also think RoboCop is one of the best flicks of all time. Go figure.