Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, 2003 - DVD

After watching 50 First Dates last week, I noticed a corrolation between Sandler and three of his former co-stars from SNL. Sandler has been the Executive Producer on a number of their films, especially lately.

Spade had a serious following from SNL and with his friend Chris Farley, did well with Tommy Boy and Black Sheep. But somewhere in there, Spade took some pretty crappy films. 8 Heads in a Duffle Bag, Senseless, Lost & Found... but he's definitely come back on the right track. I really enjoyed Joe Dirt. I think Spade has a talent as a writer. He's come up with two pretty original films his last two times out (Dirt and Dickie Roberts), and I've enjoyed his films, along with Scheider's, more than I have with Sandler.

The films are original. The characters are well thought out... I think that writing his own material (along with Fred Wolf, who is another SNL alumni from the writing pool) helps him flesh out the character much more than Sandler can.

This isn't the first time that Wolf and Spade have worked together. He wrote Black Sheep, Dirty Work with Norm MacDonald, and also Joe Dirt, co-written by Spade. He's also working on the script for Richard Matheson's The Incredible Shrinking Man, being directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans. Should be interesting.

I bought this movie blind. I hadn't seen it in the theaters, but I saw the trailers and thought it looked cool and original. But I never got to see it. So, I bought a copy on eBay and watched it that night. Last night.

I have to say that I was really impressed with the movie. A lot of things impressed me, but I think Spade impressed me the most. It was unfortunate that there wasn't a blooper reel included in the DVD. I always like to know how an actor handles himself when he messes up in front of the camera. Something about it helps add another dimension to the actor and the character that he's portraying. I don't know...

Anyway. Spade is a good actor. He's got great timing and he really looks like he's enjoying himself. You get the sense that the rest of the cast enjoys working with him, as well. He's confident, and why shouldn't he be? He helped develop the character. You can see it, in both this film and Joe Dirt. Again, I was impressed.

The two kids, Jenna Boyd and Scott Terra, both of them were great, too. Jenna you've seen in both The Hunted and The Missing (both with Tommy Lee Jones). Scott has been in Eight Legged Freaks and Daredevil. I see both of them continuing to do good work in the future. Weisman, the director, has had some experience directing children, and you can see how these two were calm and cool in front of the camera. They did their jobs well.

Sam Weisman's other work includes What's the Worst That Could Happen, The Out-of-Towners, George of the Jungle and D2: The Mighty Ducks. He's been in the business for quite a while, though. His first acting role was in a TV movie, Nero Wolfe. He was also in the incredible movie Being There, in 1979. In 1982 he directed some episodes of Family Ties. He would go on to direct a load of television including episodes of Who's the Boss?, Moonlighting, The Ellen Burstyn Show, L.A. Law and, most recently, The Bernie Mac Show.

It's funny, though. After George of the Jungle, which did very well in the theaters, he did The Out-of-Towners, which did not do well. Then What's the Worst That Could Happen?, which didn't do well either. In the middle of all of that, or shortly thereafter, he went back to television with Bernie Mac. He produced the Freddie Prince vehicle Summer Catch that, in relative terms, was a success... but with two bombs, I guess he wanted to do something more stable, like television.

With a $17 million dollar budget, Dickie Roberts came out of the theaters with $22.7 million. Not great, but certainly not bad. That's not including rentals or overseas. I mean, who knows if it came out overseas, but Weisman has gotten back on the right track. Let's see if he keeps going. Nothing on his plate in the near future.

Mary McCormack had her big break, I suppose, with the Howard Stern movie Private Parts, in which she played Alison Stern, his wife. She went on to have parts in Deep Impact, True Crime, Mystery, Alaska, K-PAX and Full Frontal. She's a good actress and did well in this film. For some reason I had her confused with Julie Bowen... oops. She played well off of Spade. The two had great chemistry together. She even played well against Craig Bierko. I say 'even played well against' because the role called for McCormack to be playing a large number of roles and emotions. You'll see what I mean when you see the film. Suffice it to say, she did well.

The remainder of the cast, Lovitz, Milano and Bierko did good jobs, too. I think that the group of poker buddies, Leif Garrett, Corey Feldman, Danny Bonaduce, Barry Williams and Dustin Diamond all did a great job as well. There was a large cast of former child stars, especially at the end, and it's quite amazing how they got the entire group together.

All in all, this is a fun movie with an original idea, a lot of laughs and good acting all around.