Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:26 - Released 10/12/01
CORKY ROMANO
Rated PG-13 - Running Time: 1:26 - Released 10/12/01
I'm not at all surprised that Corky Romano is such a bad
movie. Wacky comedies starring Saturday Night Live cast
members have had an amazingly consistent proclivity for lameness,
and many of Disney's recent live-action films have been weak,
too, so it's no surprise that Corky Romano, starring SNL's
Chris Kattan (veteran of the 1998 bomb A
Night At The Roxbury) and produced by Disney pictures,
is bad. I'm just at a loss as to explain how bad it is. It's not
just ill-conceived and poorly written. It's not just full of stupid
jokes that fail to generate the slightest chuckle. It's not just
run-of-the-mill Hollowwood tripe. It's all those things and worse.
The debut effort from director Rob Pritts, written by David Garrett
and Jason Ward, is almost willfully awful, as if its producers
are consciously thumbing their collective noses at production
quality and daring us to spend our hard earned dollars to see
it, as if they are trying to see how low they can go with respect
to quality and still make money off the multitude of addle-brained
teenagers who make up the primary market share. IT IS AN INSULT
TO US ALL AND AN ABOMINATION AGAINST EVERYTHING THAT IS HOLY.
Well, okay, maybe that's a little strong. But you get the point.
Corky Romano (Kattan) is the forgotten son of crime lord Francis
"Pops" Romano (Peter Falk). Although Pops's other sons,
illiterate hothead Pauly (Peter Berg) and beefy closet-homosexual
Peter (Chris Penn) have supported him in the family business,
Corky went another way, becoming an assistant veterinarian at
a clinic called "Poodles and Pussies." But when Pops
comes under investigation by the FBI, thanks mainly to the information
they gained from his trusted but treacherous consiglieri Leo (Fred
Ward), Pops decides to call Corky in to go undercover and find
out what he can. With a fake ID bearing the name "Agent Pissant,"
Corky joins the FBI. Despite his bumbling nature and wildly effeminate
personality, he stumbles into one piece of luck after another,
convincing his superior (Richard Roundtree) that he's a skilled
agent with nerves of steel. He even manages to impress the tough
but comely Agent Russo (Vinessa Shaw), who has been assigned undercover
duty on the Romano case. However, the one person he fails to convince
is the surly Agent Davis (Matthew Glave), who attempts to expose
Corky for the fraud he is. And what makes it all absolutely hilarious
(not) is that Corky doesn't even want to be there, you see. He
just wants to be a veterinarian.
Although Chris Kattan admittedly possesses an amazing amount
of energy, even his high-impact schtick can't save this film from
its myriad weaknesses. The script is pure formula, utterly predictable
pap with nothing remotely new or interesting thrown in for flavor.
The supporting performances are the kind of trite stereotypes
you'd see on a 1970s comedy/variety show, with a host of bland,
featureless characters going through motions we have seen a million
times before. And even the so-called effects are surprisingly
cheesy, like a high school film project done on a shoestring budget.
If I were the teacher, it would have failed.
If it were indeed the producers' intention to have bad production values and conspicously lame effects, it might have been funny. But Corky is not that smart, folks. Somebody, somewhere, actually believed in this dreck. *