MEET WALLY SPARKS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Trimark) Starring: Rodney Dangerfield, David Ogden Stiers, Debi Mazar, Cindy Williams, Burt Reynolds. Screenplay: Rodney Dangerfield and Harry Basil. Producer: Leslie Greif. Director: Peter Baldwin. MPAA Rating: R (brief nudity, profanity, sexual situations, adult themes). Running Time: 106 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
I have to give this to MEET WALLY SPARKS: if you've ever seen Rodney Dangerfield before, you're going to get exactly what you expect, and if you've never seen Rodney Dangerfield before, you have no business being in the theater. Dangerfield isn't an actor; he isn't even a personality. He is a persona, a leering 70-year-old adolescent who has parlayed not getting any respect into a career most entertainers would envy. The irony in the Dangerfield persona is that he has in fact gained respect, or at least appreciation, from a generation of young comedians. MEET WALLY SPARKS turns out not to be simply a vehicle for Dangerfield to do his schtick, but a great big tribute in his honor, a dopey but almost reverent celebration of Rodney at his Rodney-est.
Dangerfield plays Wally Sparks, the host of a tabloid talk show which has developed a reputation for being the sleaziest example of a sleazy genre. When one advertiser too many pulls out of Wally's show, the network's president (Burt Reynolds) threatens to give Wally the ax. Wally and his producer Sandy (Debi Mazar) plead for a chance to clean the show up, and it is with that goal in mind that they head to Atlanta for a chance to meet with conservative Georgia governor Floyd Preston (David Ogden Stiers) at a fund-raiser for the governor's Senate campaign. When Wally is injured in an incident at the party, he feigns being unable to walk so that he can televise from the governor's mansion and try to get an interview with the governor. While the governor and his wife (Cindy Williams) try to maintain order, Wally turns the house upside down, even as he helps bring the governor's poll numbers up.
MEET WALLY SPARKS is an extremely busy movie, which is not the same as saying that a lot happens. Even the most die-hard Dangerfield fan must admit that a little bit of Rodney goes a long way, and the script seems almost desperate to provide sub-plots which will allow the star to take a breather. There is a tangent involving an attempt to blackmail the governor, a tangent involving a network toadie (Eamonn Roche) who wants to sink Wally, a romance between Wally's son (Michael Weatherly) and the governor's daughter (Lisa Thornhill), and sentimental musings about being a good father on the part of both Wally and the governor. There really isn't any point to any of it, except to pad the running time, and at 106 minutes it certainly feels padded. When it all wraps up -- with a wedding, no less -- there are going to be a lot of numb buttocks in the theater.
I'm not really sure why the even bothered with a plot at all, since it's all about Rodney. The 25 minutes which take place at the governor's fund-raiser set the tone, as Wally wanders through high society like an even more lecherous Groucho Marx, a walking punch line in search of a straight line to a gag about sexual potency, sexual frequency, sexual organs or just good old-fashioned sex. It is so obvious Rodney's world that it is almost a shock when anyone else gets a joke (the pratfalls to which Stiers, Roche and others are subjected notwithstanding). The rest of the cast is around to set 'em up, then get out of the way while Rodney knocks 'em down.
Or at least taps them over. There are a couple of genuinely funny bits in MEET WALLY SPARKS -- in one, Wally inadvertently breaks the genitalia off a male nude statue, then does a very bad job of hiding it in his pocket -- but this isn't a film built around comedic creativity. On the contrary, it is a tribute to comedic venerability, like a Henny Youngman performance with half the audience providing the obvious and familiar double entendre before Rodney can. The film is so self-aware on that point that Wally's son gets one scene in which _he_ anticipates the joke and mouths the punch line. It's all terribly dumb and predictable, but it doesn't matter to anyone involved because this is less a Rodney Dangerfield film than "Rodney Dangerfield: This Is Your Life," with a host of guest stars turning up to honor the star: Jay Leno, Roseanne, Tim Allen, Bob Saget. Tony Danza and Michael Bolton even turn up to do Dangerfield impressions, and if you think you've seen it all, you haven't until you've seen Michael Bolton do Dangerfield. MEET WALLY SPARKS is likely to be a snooze to anyone who is not arriving similarly to worship at the altar of Rodney. It is a strange experience watching a movie where everyone in the film, perhaps hoping for Dangerfield's personal benediction of "Hey, kid, you're all right," seems more interested in entertaining the star than in entertaining the audience.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Dangerfield zones: 4.
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