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Dickie Betts: Former Allman Brothers Guitarist was originally slated for release on October 3rd, but recently got bumped up to September 5th to avoid competition from Scary Movie 3. I can't speak for everyone else, but personally, I'm glad they made the effort— now I get the opportunity to conspicuously avoid films a month apart instead of avoiding them all at once. It really offers me a chance to spread out my apathy, and also gives my enormous sense of outrage a good workout. This scattered release schedule gives us an additional benefit in that, when Scary Movie 3 finally perpetrates itself upon North America on October 3rd, it will be able to land on the corpse of Nicky Romanov: Former Child Tsar. "Wow," we'll say. "Scary Movie 3 sure wasn't as bad as that Spade film. Hey, everyone remember that horrible Spade film? What was that thing called, anyway?" Then we'll all break into discussion groups while Scary Movie 3's playing, and retain no memory of its content at all (which can only serve to help our opinion of it). Starring in Sticky Roberts: Former Glue-stick Bar is David Spade, one of the few people on Earth aside from coke dealers, rehab clinicians and deep-fried sandwich caterers who depended on the late Chris Farley for the health of their careers. The two of them made a few movies together (Black Sheep, Tommy Boy, and other slight variations on the effeminate priss/dangerously obese man premise) before the big guy ate the farm. During these movies, Farley did his dramatic "fat guy who falls down a lot" act (actually a neo-Marxist critique of oppressed people reacting to The Other, as I recall) while Mr. Spade stood there a lot and played, against most speculation at the time, the straight man. Really, once you learn to not flinch whenever a giant pile of fatness repeatedly falls down next to you, the job's not terribly difficult. Still, it would not have worked in lesser hands, so Spade gets credit for that. Since Farley was hauled off to that big feed-bag in the sky, Spade has starred in Joe Dirt and Lost & Found (I really hate myself that I know these movies exist), to limited returns. Without the ingratiating, charismatic Farley to play off of, it seemed to most that David Spade was just a little too... well, David Spadey. On a scale of one to ten, Spade unfortunately ranked at least an eight on the "Is David Spade" scale, and his body of work suffered because of it. with Gimmicky Roberts: Former SNL Star, we get a completely new approach to Spade: namely, we get to see him as a bad mimeograph of Rob Schneider. Schneider, who possesses even less charisma than Spade, if that's possible, has crafted a small but durable niche based on the fact that nobody much likes him, and would pay money to see him get hurt. From The Animal to The Hot Chick to Deuce Bigalow: Male Dingo, Schneider's career as a leading man has to date been an endlessly repeating film loop of the poor slob getting pummeled in the testicles, run over by motor vehicles, mauled by animals, and thrown bodily from great heights for our potential amusement. And while no one in possession of a shot glass of dignity would profess to liking Rob Schneider, it is surely only the hard-hearted among us who wouldn't admit a willingness to see a rampaging bull batter Schneider in the ol' copy-maker for the better part of a half-hour.
We cut to a montage of Dickie performing normal childhood activities, like riding around in a stroller. But get this — he's not really young! He's thirty! If you find yourself chuckling at this premise, you are sadly the target market for this film. You most likely also live in a town with a negligently untested water supply. Picky Roberts: Formerly Healed Scar does little else but bludgeon the erroneous premise that childhood is nothing more than a set list of activities we all took part in, rather than a process of growing and learning to live with ourselves. We don't see Dickie being made fun of, isolated, pressured by peers, or made to fight his peers by older teens, all of which are the real meat of childhood in my book. In Dickie, we get nothing but a predictable succession of children's activities, with the payoff that Spade injures himself horribly while attempting to perform them. This includes getting severe friction burn from an unmoistened Slip-N-Slide, and somehow getting hit by what looks like a stationary parked car while learning to ride a bike. Though I admit an interest in watching David Spade get maimed, I'm sad to say he hasn't quite worked out Rob Schneider's pseudo-gimmick yet. Most of Schneider's tenuous appeal seems to stem from the over-the-top way he's willing to really sell his big injury payoffs. When Schneider falls down a flight of, say, one hundred stadium steps, rest assured that you can hear the concussive sound of his head bouncing off each unyielding plank in crisp, undistorted Dolby surroundsound. Spade lacks this
ability; I never once really believed he was in pain. And that,
I think you'll agree, is really the only point of charging people admission
and projecting something like this up on a large screen. RATING:
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If
you're like me, you're glad that rash has gone away. You're also savvy
enough to recognize that a movie entitled Dickie Roberts: Former
Child Star and starring David Spade isn't going to be mentioned
in any 
Spade
began toying with this concept in the magnificently unwatchable Joe
Dirt, and returns here in Eric Roberts: Former Hollywood Star
with Schneider's schtick stolen wholesale. Dickie ostensibly
concerns a former child star whose career died after he turned six and who,
at thirty, continues to toil away at his big comeback. In reality, Dickie
concerns an implausibly contrived premise that will allow Spade numerous
set pieces in which to be injured and/or crippled. This is because Dickie's
big comeback revelation doesn't concern a return to acting school, or
theater work, or getting a new agent, but rather the epiphany that he
never had a "real" childhood, and the subsequent hiring of
a surrogate family willing to pretend he is three years old for the duration
of the film.
