filmcritic.com presents a review from staff member James Brundage. You can find the review with full credits at http://www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/60e74e041ca9cd6b8625626f0062219f/168141c42ac38421882568580004debb?OpenDocument
About two years ago I wrote a short story called "Cinemascopia." The story envisioned the movie critic's hell as being stuck inside one of his own reviews. I revise this. Hell, for me, would be eternally watching Dudley Do-Right.
Dudley Do-Right, a film from Hugh Wilson, the director of Blast from the Past, is a movie so unbearably stupid that it is an utter insult to the industry as a whole for it to have even been created. In Dudley Do-Right, the title character (Fraser) is pitted against his arch-rival Snidley Whiplash (Alfred Molina) when the town of Semi-Happy Valley falls victim to massive consumerism after Whiplash takes over the town and creates an artificial gold rush by placing gold in the streams. At the same time, Whiplash and Do-Right engage in a battle for the affections of Nell (Sarah Jessica Parker). This battle includes, but is not limited to, miniature golf, Indian tribes from Brooklyn, and paint-by-numbers portraits.
For those who will say that I should remember the audience of this film, I will say that I have not grown so old that I have forgotten what little children laugh at. Wilson's script tries to be incredibly highbrow instead of going for the gut jokes that could actually make a little kid laugh. Because Hugh Wilson is -- in this critic's opinion -- a gigantic moron, his highbrow material only comes off as pretentious and unfunny.
It is clear that Hugh Wilson is trying to get parents to laugh with the entire return of 60s nostalgia which has brought back things like the VW Bug and George of the Jungle. It is clear that he is banking that you will both remember watching the original series and then be overcome by a massive nostalgia for a television show that you stopped watching because it was no longer funny. It is also clear that Hugh Wilson then will turn around and pander to your four-year-old by inserting several times where a moose falls down on Do-Right, or a floorboard hits him in the face.
But what is clear above all about the film is that it is unfunny. It is beyond unwatchable. Dudley Do-Right is the kind of movie that makes me stop believing in movies. Dudley Do-Right is the kind of film that makes you believe that hell is something that could really be torture if the devil only tried. Dudley Do-Right is a zero for the genre.
Whatever you do, don't watch Dudley Do-Right.
1.5 stars
-- Christopher Null - cnull@mindspring.com - http://www.filmcritic.com
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