Run
Ronnie Run is lot funnier than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a
huge gushing fan of Cross and Odenkirk - I recorded their sublimely offensive
and cutting-edge "Mr. Show" on VHS and am constantly lending out my
tapes. Few people realize that it was Cross and Odenkirk who gave Jack Black his
first break (actually turning over 10 minutes of their half hour to Jack and Kyle
and giving the world it’s first taste of Tenacious D. Why, then did I not
expect Run Ronnie Run to be as funny as it was? Mainly because it was based on
a sketch character and historically movies based on Sketch comedy characters tend
to run out of gas and start sucking wind about 35 minutes in. Cross And Odenkirk
know what they’re doing and as a result Run Ronnie Run, is high among the
funniest movies of the year and will, no doubt, achieve cult status similar to
Office Space.
Ronnie
Dobbs (David Cross) is a fictitious white trash Denizen of Doraville, Ga., with
a few bad habits, a good heart, loyal friends and a real knack for getting arrested
- COPS style. In fact he’s become something of a local celebrity as a result
of his COPS-show arrest record - and the chases are seriously hilarious. He runs
through someone’s house and right past this naked guy sitting in a tub of
brown water. “Excuse us Earl,” they all apologize to the brown-bather
as they dash past.
All
this was well and good, but I didn’t know much about the film and I couldn’t
imagine 90 minutes of following Ronnie around on the run. But the film takes a
rather ingenious twist as a washed up Television producer named of Terry Twillstein
(Bob Odenkirk), happens to see the charismatic Dobbs trying to wiggle out of this
weeks dragnet and gets a great idea. Odenkirk plays Twillstein as a version of
that British, infomercial huckster, famous for “that Showroom Finish.”
he’s also desperate to find a product that will sell.
Soon
Twillstein shows up in Doraville with big promises of riches and fame and before
long Ronnie is the star of his own reality show called "Ronnie Dobbs Gets
Arrested." The premise is pretty simple. Each week they drop Ronnie off in
a different big city, leave him to his own natural devices, and inevitably winds
up arrested by the local fuzz. Pretty soon Ronnie is a famous and the film turns
into a mostly effective and hilarious fish-out-of-water tale as Ronnie moves into
a mansion and begins hanging out with a who’s who of comic celebrities. (The
cameos alone are worth watching this movie for).
Cross
sticks to his dumb-guy comic approach and it works brilliantly among the elite
Hollywood types. The movie never becomes tiresome because the film shifts back
and forth from Ronnies mullet-headed misadventures in Beverly Hills and a whole
lot of well-written bits parodying TV and celebrity culture, and a wonderful throwaway
diversion about the "gay conspiracy" the conservatives are always talking
about. The jokes come fast and furious and most of them find cork, and alot of
them you get the second time you watch it.
But
Cross and Odenkirk aren’t content to lampoon the Hollywood phoney baloney,
there’s plenty of belly-laughs at the expense of white trash, too, though
none of it seems malicious. There's a montage set to that great dirtbag anthem
"Every Rose Has Its Thorn," and Ronnie himself is as cheerfully belligerent
and socially ignorant as every moron you've ever seen on "Cops."
Celebrity
cameos abound, from the likes of Ben Stiller, Patrick Warburton, Jeff Goldblum,
Matt Stone and Trey Parker, Kathy Griffin, Garry Shandling, Jack Black and Mandy
Patinkin. Patinkin is uproariously funny as himself, playing Ronnie in "Ronnie
Dobbs: The Musical." ("Y'all Are Brutalizing Me" is his big torch
song, sung to the cops who are trying to arrest him and who clearly are not brutalizing
him.) And out of left field comes a supposed scene cut (for time) out of Mary
Poppins with Jack Black stepping into Dick Van Dyke’s sooty suit for a rousing
rooftop parody entitled “Kick her in the Cunt.” On paper I know it sounds
beyond bad taste, but it’s maybe the funniest thing in the film.
Another
musical interlude (a sexy R. Kelly-esque song that substitutes double entendre
for literal and frank sex lyrics) has it’s moments, but isn’t as funny,
just because it wasn’t as well written and it was mostly there for shock
value. Much like Parker and Stone, Cross, Odenkirk and fellow writers - Scott
Aukerman, BJ Porter and Brian Posehn come off seemingly innocent. They don’t
hurl the filthy and nasty around, they just show you a picture of it - keep a
straight face and move onto the next picture. These guys are confident that their
audience will get it, that they don’t have to thrust your face into it and
if you don’t get it - take a hike. Rent Wet Hot American Summer - which in
my opinion is at the other end of the parody spectrum. The unfunny end, that has
no point.
Again
this is a film that Adam saw at Sundance and that will probably have to make it’s
mark in the video stores, on the strength of strong word-of-mouth. Just like Clerks,
just like Office Space.
