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From a future former star
David Spade is like a one-trick pony that occasionally lifts its tail and drops something unpleasant for everyone to see. This time it's Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star (PG-13), another chance for the least funny Saturday Night Live alumnus since Joe Piscopo to ply his needling superiority shtick for the masses.
Spade plays the title role, a television celebrity 30 years ago whose celebrity ended when puberty began. Unable to get an acting gig and dissatisfied with his life parking cars, Dickie hires a foster family to provide him with the "normal" childhood he missed.
Previews show Spade being carted in a baby stroller, playing on a Slip 'n Slide without water and, of course, making snide remarks at people who don't match his idea of perfection, even though he's far from that goal himself.
The only thing that might make Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star worth paying full price for are cameo appearances by a roster of real former child stars. The list includes Willie Aames (Eight is Enough), Danny Bonaduce (The Partridge Family), Dustin Diamond (Saved by the Bell), Emmanuel Lewis (Webster) and Leif Garrett. Each of them knows something about being has-beens that Spade is just a couple more flops away from learning.
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Pass on the calamari
Heath Ledger is still a bit wet behind the ears to play an exorcist, but that's what The Order (R) has him doing. I think I'd rather trust my eternal soul to someone like Max von Sydow, who looks as if he's lived and learned quite a bit more.
Ledger plays Alex Bernier, a member of a medieval order of priests known as Carolingians. When the grand pooh-bah dies, Father Alex is dispatched to Rome to investigate the suspicious circumstances. Why would a sacred order rely on such a pup for such an important mission? Because the box office is driven by Ledger's core demographics, so money trumps authenticity.
Anyway, Father Alex teams with his mentor, Father Thomas Garrett (Mark Addy), and an exorcism survivor (Shannyn Sossamon, who appeared with Ledger in A Knight's Tale). Together they are swept into occult circumstances that can't be explained because 20th Century Fox made it clear that no advance screenings of The Order would be scheduled for critics.
The movie's original release date was postponed when preview audiences laughed at special effects that, according to Variety, made sins departing the body look like calamari. Maybe they were retouched, or perhaps Fox thinks the bad publicity has blown over by now.
- S.P.
Disney floats "Hope Springs"
Don't blink or else you'll miss a rarity: a film produced by the Disney dynasty that is being unceremoniously dumped in theaters. Hope Springs (PG-13), from Buena Vista Pictures, was a late addition to this week's lineup and is screening locally at only one theater, AMC Tri-City 8 in Largo. It could be a test run to measure audience response, but it smacks of an attempt to recoup some production costs before moving on to home video obscurity.
Hope Springs stars Colin Firth (What a Girl Wants) as an artist who moves to Vermont after being jilted by his fiancee (Minnie Driver). He's too handsome to be lonely for long, so a matchmaker (Mary Steenburgen) arranges a date with the town's most eligible bachelorette (Heather Graham). Before long, the ex-girlfriend arrives to throw the artist's emotions into conflict.
The movie is based on a book titled New Cardiff by Charles Webb. He also wrote The Graduate, watched it become a classic film, then didn't pen another novel for nearly 25 years. The way Hope Springs is being handled by Disney could stop him from trying again for another quarter-century.
- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic