This week’s Sunday “Bad” Movie is Simon Sez. It’s a movie from
1999 that was one of two starring vehicles for basketball player Dennis
Rodman. One of the first topics I
debated writing about was athletes in movies.
The problem is that I already covered that topic when I watched the
movie Gymkata. Since then, I haven’t
watched enough movies starring athletes to possibly fill another post. To go over that topic again without anything
to add would be to beat a dead horse.
This is especially true because I don’t feel the need to improve upon
that one. This all means that I had to
come up with a better course of action for writing this post. What would the topic be, if not athletes in
movies? I thought for a while before
landing on something similar, yet at the same time completely different. I turned away from Dennis Rodman and set my
sights on his co-star, Dane Cook.
So the topic of this week’s post is going to be stand-up
comedians in movies. Now, I know this is
going to be an odd entry in the Sunday “Bad” Movies because in many cases,
stand-up comedians aren’t that bad in movies.
However, many of their careers are interesting to look at from a bad
movie point of view. Though many
stand-up comedians have good movies that they are in, they tend to also have
their fair share of stinkers in their filmography. I would like to take a look at the lower end
of some stand-up comedians’ film careers.
One of the first comedians that comes to mind when I think
of careers that took a nosedive in quality is Eddie Murphy. He came to prominence in the early 1980s as
the breakout star of Dick Ebersol’s era of Saturday
Night Live. He lit up the stage
every time he appeared on it. You might
be saying to yourself that sketch comedy like Saturday Night Live is not stand-up comedy. To that, I counter with Eddie Murphy’s two
stand-up comedy films: Raw and Delirious. Those highlighted how great (albeit offensive
by today’s politically correct, equality driven culture) he was as a stand-up
performer. His talents in both stand-up
and sketch comedy would soon land him a slew of popular film roles in movies
that included Trading Places, 48Hrs, and Beverly Hills Cop. But
somewhere along the way, Murphy’s career took a severe dive as he began
starring in movies like The Adventures of
Pluto Nash, Meet Dave, and Norbit.
As much as everyone still likes Eddie Murphy as a personality, most of
his more recent work is nowhere near the quality that it was in the 1980s. He lost his comedic mojo somewhere and cannot
seem to get it back.
Robin Williams is another interesting stand-up comedian to
look at when you think about the highs and lows of a career. He is nowhere near as binary as Eddie Murphy,
though. For every bad movie, he would
have a better one to follow. It wasn’t a
total decline in quality. If Robin
Williams made an RV, he would make a
movie like One Hour Photo. If he made Old Dogs, he would make a World’s
Greatest Dad. He would make cheesy
family comedies that were critically panned while also being featured in work
that would push the boundaries of what you expected out of him. That doesn’t forgive the License to Weds of his career but makes the pill easier to
swallow. His presence in movies both
good and bad make it easy to forget that the man who gave us a Flubber remake came from stand-up. Robin Williams was one of the people behind
Comic Relief. Hell, when they said
goodbye to him at the Emmys, the clip they ended with was from his
stand-up. That’s enough about Robin. Let’s move onto a few people known more for
their stand-up than their films.
You can’t open up your Netflix account without being
bombarded with stand-up specials of Kevin Hart.
They tell you about how “Seriously
Funny” he his. He apparently has a
huge following which has allowed him to make the transition into film. Last year’s Ride Along and this year’s The
Wedding Ringer have helped to establish him as a Hollywood star. Things haven’t always been this way for Mr.
Hart though. I still remember seeing him
in the mid-2000s in a supporting role in Scary
Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4. It’s a wonder that anyone’s careers
flourished after that, but Anna Faris and Charlie Sheen were successful on
television after that. Meanwhile, Kevin
Hart went from talking about how a person can’t wake up dead to movie
stardom. So far, his career has seemed
to take the opposite trajectory of Eddie Murphy’s. (Can I go one entry without bringing Eddie
up?)
Then you have Louis C.K.
No, I don’t believe he has had a starring role in a movie. He’s had bit parts like a security guard in Role Models or that guy in American Hustle. If he’s been the star of a movie, the movie
is slipping my mind right now. He’s more
focused on television, what with the HBO show he had years ago, and the FX show
he has garnered a lot of critical acclaim for more recently. What I really want to bring up, however, is
that he’s the man behind the classic Pootie
Tang. He wrote and directed it. That is one interesting movie. And it is a unique movie. I’ve never seen anything that was written in
a similar way to it. It is the true
brilliance of Louis C.K. that a movie like that could even exist. I don’t necessarily consider it a bad movie,
but it’s weird enough that only a small portion of the movie watching audience
would enjoy it. It’s an outlier, and I
would be willing to feature it in these blog posts at some point.
The final stand-up comedian that I want to feature is the
guy that inspired this post. First, I
want to talk about the part of his film career that he is known for, then I
will get to why I think that Simon Sez
is worse. In the mid-2000s, Dane Cook
became a popular mainstream comedian. He
was everywhere. He hosted Saturday Night Live multiple times. He had stand-up specials. People were mimicking him to their
friends. And he had a series of movies
(not a franchise, just a few movies) that he starred in that never really
gained the critical acclaim that was likely desired. Good
Luck Chuck fizzled and has become more of a punchline than a movie that
people want to see. Employee of the Month has been all but forgotten. My Best
Friend’s Girl was forgotten before it came out. And then there’s Mr. Brooks. Let’s not talk
about this. These were his four big
movies, I’d say, and none of them hit in the way that his stand-up comedy
had. It was as unsuccessful an attempt
at breaking into film as I’ve seen any stand-up comedian have.
Simon Sez was
before all this, though, and it is a wonder that he was ever given the chance
at starring in movies again. This was
1999. It was before the big surge of
Dane Cook that I am familiar with. The
performance was insane. The physical
comedy of it was so over the top that it made Jim Carrey look tame. Not that Jim Carrey is in Simon Sez. He’s not.
But Dane Cook is, and he’s giving the worst performance of his career as
a failed spy. He isn’t suited to action
at all, and the comedy is so hokey that he barely fits into that either. It’s like if his stand-up routine had sex
with itself and produced inbred offspring with the negative mutations. It was terrible. And I’m terrible for writing that
comparison. Yuck. It was one of the worst performances by
someone who I’ve seen actually act well in other movies. And let’s just leave it at that.
I guess that stand-up comedians are just like any other
working actor that graces the screen.
They make good movies and they make bad movies. They have good performances and bad
performances. Many of them manage to
hold their own as movie talents. You’ve
got Eddie Murphy, Kevin Hart, Robin Williams, and many others including Billy
Crystal, Tim Allen, and Jay Mohr. They’ve
all made a name for themselves in movies, even if only for a brief period of
time. Stand-up comedians don’t suffer
from the same sort of issues as athletes.
Their stage presence and ability to time jokes lends itself better to
film than an athlete’s ability to get a ball in a net. So, in the end, this post isn’t as successful
as I had hoped it would be. Oh
well. I tried. Can you blame me for trying it?
There are, of course, some notes before this post ends:
- Here’s the post for Gymkata.
- Simon Sez was suggested by @JaimeBurchardt. He also suggested the movies House of the Dead and Monster Brawl.
- Dane Cook inspired the post. He was in Simon Sez. He previously appeared in the Sunday “Bad” Movie titled Torque.
- Kevin Elders, the director of Simon Sez had a bit part in the movie. He also wrote Iron Eagle and had a bit part in that movie.
- Have you seen Simon Sez? Have you seen some of the bad movies from any of the comedians I wrote about? Do you feel like stand-up comedians make good or bad actors? If you have anything to say related to this post in any way, feel free to comment below.
- You can also comment if you have any suggestions for movies that I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies. You could also Tweet me anything bad movie related, or email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.
- Next week’s movie is the terrible Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. I did this one to myself and I don’t regret it one bit, though I wish I had those 77 minutes back.
