September 5, 2003 | Some actors –- especially some comic actors — are almost too good for their own good when it comes to creating and sustaining an on-screen persona. Take David Spade –- please. In real life, he may be an affable, easygoing sweetheart. In his film and TV work, however, he has specialized in playing fey know-it-alls who delight in spewing venomous sarcasm. Indeed, throughout several seasons of Saturday Night Live and Just Shoot Me , and during most of his movies (most notably, and annoyingly, Lost & Found ), Spade has perfected the not-so-fine art of fingernails-on-blackboard obnoxiousness.
And because he’s been so convincing, so often, at playing basically unlikable people –- well, he isn’t terribly easy to like, even when the audience is supposed to have a rooting interest in the character he’s playing.
The good news is, Spade obviously recognized this problem -– and more important, found a way to turn it to his advantage -– while collaborating on the script for Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, a surprisingly pleasant comedy in which he plays the title role. Working in concert with director Sam Weisman ( George of the Jungle ) and co-writer Fred Wolf, he craftily overcomes any possible audience hostility by repeatedly causing physical pain or excruciating embarrassment for Dickie. It’s hard to hate, or even actively dislike, anyone who’s so frequently the butt of jokes (even if that someone helped write most of those jokes in the first place).
As a precocious five-year old scene-stealer on a ’70s TV sitcom, little Dickie Roberts was a much-loved mini-icon with his very own trademark catchphrase: “It’s nucking futs!” (Which certainly isn’t something a real sitcom star could have said during the ’70s, but never mind.) At 35, however, Dickie is a D-list has-been who chronically stews over his long-stalled career while working as a valet parker at a Hollywood restaurant.
Dickie’s eccentric affectations – he constantly wears gloves to protect against “infections” –- are holdovers from his misspent youth with a boozy stage mother (Doris Roberts). And his pathetic attempts at re-capturing yesterday’s glory – such as agreeing to a Celebrity Boxing match-up with a brutal Emmanuel Lewis – – are consistently ineffective. (More inside jokes abound at a weekly poker games with other ex-child stars — including Leif Garrett and Corey Feldman — whose gripes about current Hollywood heavyweights are flavored with tangy smidgens of professional jealously.)
Thanks to his amazingly loyal agent (Jon Lovitz), Dickie gets his last best chance at a comeback when he interviews for the lead in an upcoming movie directed by Rob Reiner (who’s perfectly cast as himself). Trouble is, the role calls for someone capable of playing a well-rounded grown-up. As Reiner indelicately informs Dickie: “You’re not a real person.” During his child-star heyday, Dickie “completely missed out on the basic fundamental of adulthood -– which is childhood.”
Undeterred, Dickie prepares for the part by casting himself in a rerun of his youth. He sets out to “adopt” an average suburban family, figuring he can learn everything about “normal” childhood by living as a child for two months with some happy clan. Fortuitously, Dickie finds someone almost as desperate as he: George Finney (Craig Bierko), a failing car dealer who opens his home – and exposes his wife and children -– to the one-time child star. For a price, of course.
Not surprisingly, wife Grace (Mary McCormack) and middle-schoolers Sally (Jenna Boyd) and Sam (Scott Terra) are uneasy about living alongside a gloved wacko with a bad case of arrested development. And Dickie -– who admits, as he disdainfully eyes his “adopted” siblings, “I’m not really such a kid person!” -– finds it hard to get in touch with his inner tyke.
One thing leads to another, however, and that leads to something else. Dickie begins to bond with Sally and Sam, and tentatively warms toward the neglected Grace. Nothing much that happens next is terribly surprising, but much of it is lightly amusing. Call it funnier than it has any right to be, and you won’t be far off the mark.
Working from a premise that seems scarcely substantial enough to sustain a variety-show sketch, the makers of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star offer a largely satisfying mix of broad slapstick, seriocomic sentimentality and mostly amusing satirical thrusts at easy targets. There’s also a nicely subtle running gag: Thanks to canny production design by Dina Lipton, the Finney home actually looks a lot like the set of a typical TV sitcom of 30 or 40 years ago. Indeed, as Grace, Sally and Sam are written and played, they could pass as co-stars of such a series. (George looks too sinister with his goatee -– he would more likely be a mean next-door neighbor.) All of which makes Dickie’s rebirth in his brave new world seem, if not more plausible, then at least weirdly logical.
