Dickie Roberts Former Child Star

Spade got his start on Saturday Night Live a decade ago, during one of its cyclical nadirs. The cast then included Adam Sandler and the late Chris Farley, and for a few series SNL proceeded as if it had been handed over to a feckless gang of over-privileged frat boys whose relationship with their audience ran to lazy goading and wincing contempt. At any given moment in some deathless skit, one expected and exhausted Spade to sigh, 'C'mon, that's funny' - which happens to be the final line of this deathless feature-length skit. As a five-year-old, Dickie starred in a sitcom. Thirty years on, he's a misanthropic LA car park attendant who dresses like a homeless pimp, reduced to celebrity boxing gigs and afflicted by 'compulsive glove wearing'. He's desperate to relaunch his career with an ordinary shmo role in a Rob Reiner drama, but when the director suggests that a missing childhood may hinder playing a plausible adult, Dickie embraces the Method and hires a family of his own: prat husband, doormat wife, two appalling children. Commence emotional rescue, as Dickie absorbs life lessons and the movie undergoes the awkward transition from grating smart-ass farce to touchy-feely family fare. Dickie's fellow Former Child Stars (Danny Bonaduce, a few Bradys) are trotted out as instant sight gags and sign off en masse with an extended group singalong, an off-key nostalgia trip that picks up where the movie's bad cover version of warmhearted pathos leaves off. JWin.