Film Reviews

Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star

• Rating:
• Director: Sam Weisman.
• Starring: David Spade, Mary McCormack, Jon Lovitz, Craig Bierko, Jenna Boys, Scott Tessa, Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner.
• Details: US / 99 mins / (15PG).

Rarely do the words 'David Spade' and 'comedy' converge to make for an enjoyable cinematic experience, and this doesn't exactly change with 'Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star'. Co-written by its star, Dickie Roberts sees Spade playing the former sit-com star with the idiotic catchphrase 'This is nucking futs' which made him one of the small screen's hottest talents in the 1970s. Needless to say, he's fallen on hard times since, leading to him take a valet job in LA. However, he's desperately eager to mount a John Travolta-esque comeback and has his heart set on winning a role in Rob Reiner's latest film. Believing that the flick will re-cement his standing in Hollywood's elite, Dickie goes to extreme lengths to land the role, including paying people to pretend to be his parents (don't ask), and give him the childhood he never had. Ah shucks. There are few things worse than a film thinking it's smarter than it actually is, yet one of them is seeing David Spade in a film which thinks it is smarter than it actually is. The kind of actor who makes Adam Sandler look like a perfectly sane and reasonable human being, Spade negotiates the movie with the sort of pushy, supercilious humour that has them running for the aisles rather than rolling in them. Which is not to say that 'Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star' is completely without merit - there are a couple of reasonably decent gags in the film, but after a decent opening, the swift and brutal adherence to sentiment makes it difficult to stomach. Indeed, the whole outcasts and misfits sub genre is given such a blank return by Spade that it actually becomes difficult to root for the outsider here.

Review by Garreth Murphy