‘Dickie Roberts’ just another Spade ‘ho-hum’ flick
“Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star” has a lot in common with David Spade’s filmogra-phy: It shows early promise (“Tommy Boy”) but quickly degenerates into an unfunny mess (“8 Heads In A Duffel Bag,” “Senseless,” “Joe Dirt”). The six-minute E! True Hollywood Story parody that opens “Dickie” is as good as it gets in this otherwise insipid offering from the writing team that assailed us with “Joe Dirt” (that would be Spade and former Saturday Night Live head writer Fred Wolf) and producer Adam Sandler, another SNL alum who enjoys immense popularity despite churning out more dogs than Oscar Meyer.
Spade plays Roberts, a 35-year-old former child star plunged so far into obscurity, he’s parking cars at an LA restaurant for a living. During his heyday on a popular ’70s sitcom called the “The Glimmer Gang,” young Dickie was celebrated for his tongue-twisting catch-phrase, “That’s nucking futs!” Now he’s a nobody who pals around with Leif Garrett and the guy who played Screech on “Saved by the Bell” and it’s driving him, well, … you know. After getting whupped by Emmanuelle Lewis (the former child star of “Webster”) in a celebrity boxing match, Dickie gets dumped by his trailer-trash girlfriend Cyndi (FCS Alyssa Milano) and hits rock bottom. But then along comes an opportunity: Rob Reiner (as himself) is casting the lead for a new movie. If Dickie can land the plum role, he’ll be back on top. Problem is, Reiner feels that Dickie, whose career deprived him of a real childhood, isn’t “normal” enough for the part. So Dickie comes up with a plan — he pays a seemingly picture-perfect family 20 grand for a crash course on being an average kid.
Ahh, but the Finney family isn’t as idyllic as it seems. The patriarch, George (Craig Bierko) is a two-timing deadbeat dad who’s only in it for Dickie’s money. All the long-suffering wife Grace (Mary McCormack) and kids (Scott Terra and Jenna Boyd) want is a decent man to take care of them. You can probably figure out where the story goes from there.
The good news for Spade fans is that this is one of the more endurable films he’s done. Of course, that’s like bragging your kid was valedictorian at summer school. One of the central problems with “Dickie Roberts” is that rather than stick to the black comedy that makes the opening sequence so enjoyable, Spade forgoes his snide side for sentimental schlock that’s supposed to remind us it’s not about the money and the fame, you see, it’s about the LOVE. That’s all well and good, unless you LOVE a few laughs mixed in with your half-baked morality lessons. (Rated PG-13 for crude and sex-related humor, language and drug references. Running time: 98 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 5, 2003. Read the original PDF.