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Just because this movie only gets a D doesn’t mean it’s not an improvement over Macdonald’s abysmal self-penned 1998 film Dirty Work, which was easily one of the worst movies of that year. As he’s no doubt figured out by now, a narrowly funny shtick doesn’t necessarily translate well to film; what gets a laugh during a few minutes of free TV during Letterman may not be worth $4/hour to the typical moviegoer. This time, at least, he’s cast in something written by a team with a resume, Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who collaborated on Ed Wood, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon.
Macdonald plays Willard Fillmore, the longsuffering, underpaid butler to chintzy septuagenarian pastry magnate Mrs. Crock (Elaine Stritch). When he learns he’s about to get fired on Christmas day, Willard and buddy Rusty (fellow stand-up comic Dave Chappelle) plot to ransom her dog for $1 million. Pomeranian-napping turns out to be tougher than it looks, though, and they wind up faking Willard’s kidnapping instead, with help from Grover Cleaver (Danny DeVito, looking like something you’d pay someone else good money to remove from your shower drain), an unbelievably repulsive mortuary attendant whose chief function seems to be to reflect the writers’ obsession with dead Republicans. Adding to the cheap-wine-buzz quality of all this is the appearance of declining-career TV actors Sherman Hemsley and Daniel Benzali (remember “Murder One”?), who looks about as natural doing comedy as he would with hair.
Face it – Norm Macdonald is a professional smartass, not an actor. But at least he’s learning. D
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