Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star

      Bucky Larson: Born to be a Star is my nomination for the worst movie to come out this year (that I’ve seen).  I really, really wanted to like this film.  I appreciate Happy Madison films (Adam Sandler’s production company), I love Nick Swarsdon’s stand-up comedy.  It’s great to see 80’s icon Don Johnson in a out-of-character type comedic role, and quite frankly, the premise of this movie tickled my arrested developed funny bone.  The story is about a naive bucktoothed midwesterner who decides to go to Hollywood to become a porn star after he discovers his parents were marginally famous pornstars in the 70’s.  Despite being woefully under-endowed and a virgin, he is convinced that it is his family destiny.  I thought, this HAS to be funny, or at least have some good laughs.  Much like when I thought my parents would love the movie ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure’, I was wrong.

The movie is a one joke premise that is played over and over which by the end of the movie we realize it wasn’t all that funny to begin with.  Creative comedic minds like Adam Sandler or like Mike Myers once came up with concepts and characters that resonated with the movie going public.  It made them rich men.  Unfortunately, for every ‘Waterboy’ or ‘Austin Powers’, there is a ‘Little Nicky’ or ‘The Love Guru’.  Their characters and humor miss more often than not.  Bucky Larson has Adam Sandler’s humor written all over it (he was a co-writer) and it just missed it’s mark (I’m not even sure he was facing the target).  I will still say I respect the kind of creativity it takes to come up with these stories and movies, but it is like mining for gold.  You have to sift through a lot of mud and sludge and you only occasionally hit gold.  This movie falls into the sludge category.

What’s so depressing is that there is a lot of talent and potential in the movie.  Don Johnson, playing out-of-type as the once great porn director; Miles Deep.  Don shows that he is not just another pretty face (albeit aging one).  He really showed some comedic timing and was probably one of the only highlights in the movie.  Christina Ricci played the requisite love interest attractively and capable.  I think the reason she was really cast is she is one of the few actresses shorter than Nick Swarsdon. Even Stephen Dorf (the “never was one” actor) playing porn legend Dick Shadow channeled Brett Michaels humorously. Also, the usual cast of support actors that are in most Sandler movies all do their usual interesting job.  Despite all of this (and even smiling through a good portion of the film), I felt this was just an awful movie.  The gags were self congratulatory for no reason and just not funny.  There was a scene when Christina Ricci’s character Kathy compared a burly biker looking guy in a restaurant to Chewbacca from Star Wars.  There was plenty of pause in the dialogue to allow for the audience to laugh.  I could hear crickets during the awkward pause as we waited (not exactly with bated breath) for the dialogue to resume.  I have to confess that the endless parade of spoof porn titles throughout the movie was always good for a smile, but not much more made me laugh.

I wish I could go into plot points, but the first paragraph of this review pretty much sums up the entire movie.  This reminds me of one of those Saturday Night live skits that they turn into movies without the benefit of ever having been on SNL before.  Mike Myer’s struck gold with Wayne’s World and now everyone thinks they can all strike gold with these type of character sketch comedies (even the Waterboy was based off a SNL skit).  Bucky Larson MIGHT have been funny in a two minute sketch format, but I wouldn’t bet money on that.

The movie was directed by Tom Brady (not the football player although I think he couldn’t have done a worse job) and I have a feeling this will not exactly enhance his career.  I hope that Nick Swarsdon gets his big break someday because I do feel he is a comedic talent, but much like the late great John Candy, I think his niche is supporting comedy.  I don’t think he is leading comedic man material.  Hey, that’s not so bad.  It’s worked for John C Reily and you can have all the benefits of a movie career without all that pesky fame bothering you.

I give a hats off to Don Johnson, but other then him, this movie is a colossal waste of time and money (for both me and the studios).  I hope the studio exec who previewed this and said; ‘Yeah, let’s release this’, loses his job.  I really have only myself to blame as I tried to talk myself into seeing ‘Contagion’ this weekend, but I convinced myself this would be a better time than watching a plague movie.  Once again;  I was wrong.

My first ever zero stars