The Ladies Man (2000) review-a pretty limp comedy

In the modern sphere internet movie critics, one of their favourite recent punching bags is the (relatively) new phenomenon of social media influencers starring in feature films or ongoing series.

“Oh look,” they say over a glass of Cognac. “Somebody decided to remake Airplane with noted corpse vlogger Logan Paul. How very pedestrian.”

“You think that’s bad?” another would chime in while polishing their monocle. “Check out this hospital drama where the entire cast is made up of Tik Tok stars.”

While these commentators are not wrong, I think their analysis often falls short in terms of putting these entertainment properties in the right historical context.

After all, out-of-touch movie executives have always been on the lookout for some flash-in-the-pan celebrity that they can turn into a star overnight, no matter what era of film we’re talking about.

Take, for example, SNL Studios’ output from the late 1990s and early 2000s, since this production company specialized in using middling characters from the late-night sketch show to headline theatrical releases.

While I’ve already talked at length about Bruce McCulloch’s Superstar (1999), Reginald Hudlin’s The Ladies Man (2000) suffers from largely the same problem, where the central protagonist cannot sustain a 90-minute runtime.

The story itself centres around Leon Phelps (Tim Meadows), a self-professed love guru who dishes out dubious sex and relationship advice over late-night radio.

When Phelps’ show gets thrown off the air due to lude conduct, the “ladies man” is forced to re-evaluate his priorities and figure out how he wants to spend the rest of his life (and with who).

Meanwhile, a mob of angry cuckolds is roaming the streets out for blood since Phelps secretly bedded all their wives and girlfriends.

Having never watched a Leon Phelps sketch before popping in this DVD, I was pretty baffled as to why this character was popular in the first place (to the point where SNL execs thought he could carry his own movie).

Outside of saying raunchy things at inappropriate moments, and dressing like a Soul Train reject, Phelps doesn’t have anything else substantial to offer in the comedy department, which puts the film on extremely shaky ground.

The whole movie I was waiting for Meadows to move past spouting grade school sex jokes and reveal an extra dimension to his personality, but that time never came.

Instead, all of Phelps’ character growth is boiled down to his evolving relationship with his producer Julie (Karyn Parsons), even though that romantic turn is telegraphed from a mile away.

The writers try and give this character a little more depth by providing him with a backstory at the very beginning of the movie, but this flashback doesn’t really play into anything later on and just serves as filler for a movie that’s only 84 minutes long.

Phelps’ status as a lothario and master seducer also left me scratching my head.

Even though Meadows is a good-looking guy, he carries the same kind of cheesy bravado of a pre-teen boy who just discovered his first chest hair, with cringy pick-up lines that wouldn’t even work during happy hour at Chili’s.

It would be one thing if the writers framed Phelps as a kind of Johnny Bravo character, who talks a big game but constantly gets rejected.

But judging by the sheer amount of the scorned husbands and boyfriends who what the “ladies man” dead, Phelps’ obnoxious style of courtship is irresistible to the opposite sex, apparently.

This sloppy writing creates a disconnect between the character and the audience, since we’re never given any opportunity to see him as a person who could potentially operate like this in the real world.

Of course, these shortcomings could be tolerable if the jokes were at least funny, but The Ladies Man severely fumbles in this department as well.

While the movie did elicit a chuckle from me here and there, most of the gags were dead on arrival because of how lazy and predictable they are.

For example, 25-minutes into the film Phelps scores a short-lived gig at a Christian radio station; a scenario that any half-baked writer could spin into comedy gold.

Unfortunately, they only thing this crew could come up with involves Phelps interviewing a nun who spouts off a bunch of unintentional double-entendres like how she is going to “assume a missionary position” in “Bangkok.”

The film’s running gags don’t fair any better, since most of them involve taking tired concepts and completely driving them into the ground.

One of the worst examples of this involves Will Ferrell’s character (one of the cuckolded husbands), whose repressed homosexuality is tied to his affinity for Greco-Roman wrestling.

In fact, the film is so devoid of imagination that some of its supporting players spontaneously break out into a poorly choreographed musical number just to fill up two minutes of screen time.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against raunchy sex jokes or “LOL SO RANDOM” humour, but those elements need to be presented with some level of finesse in a feature film. Otherwise, I might as well be watching a “funniest nut shot” montage on YouTube.

With that being said, The Ladies Man does at least contain a couple decent supporting characters that help make the movie’s surrounding mediocrity a little more digestible.

The strongest of these is played by Billy Dee Williams, who doubles as Phelps’ mentor and the story’s narrator.

Not only are Williams’ silky tones welcome in any movie, but the writers also sneak in some decent fourth-wall breaking jokes where the actor’s monologue constantly gets interrupted by other characters in the film.

And Karyn Parsons is really grounded and likable as Phelps’ assistant Julie, so much that you wonder why she is wasting this quality performance on a film that has barely enough material for a five-minute sketch.

In the end, The Ladies Man’s biggest shortcoming is that it fails to justify its own existence as a star-making vehicle for Meadows, who never really got another chance to be a leading man after this movie flopped (both critically and financially).

However, this isn’t entirely the comedian’s fault, since not even a more versatile performer like Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock or Jamie Foxx could make this sub-par material sing.

But if Meadows wanted to bring a character like Leon Phelps back in 2020, the door is definitely open for him on an online platform like YouTube, where seemingly every celebrity is spending more and more of their time because of COVID-19.

Just don’t be surprised if such a move is met with scorn and derision by the internet commentators I mentioned earlier, since there’s nothing that these folks love more than tearing down a mainstream actor moving in on their territory.

Verdict:

3/10

Corner store companion:

Compliments Wieners (because it they’re short, cheaply made and don’t leave you satisfied)

Fun facts:

-Release date: Oct. 13, 2000

-Budget: $24 million (estimated)

-Box office gross: $13,743,212 (worldwide)

-According to Wikipedia, Tim Meadows appeared as Leon Phelps on SNL a total of 15 times between October 1997 and October 2000. His last appearance as the character took place on Oct. 7, 2000 (a week before the movie was set to premiere).

-At the time of this movie’s release, Meadows was the longest running cast member on SNL, having been with the sketch show since 1991. His record was surpassed in 2005 by Darrell Hammond and again in 2017 by Kenan Thompson.

–Surprise cameo: Julianne Moore makes a brief appearance as one of Phelps’ former flings who has sex with him in a full clown regalia. This role took places two years after Moore was nominated for a Best-Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Boogie Nights (1997).

–The Ladies Man is also the title of a 1961 comedy starring Jerry Lewis, who stars as a nervous young man trying to overcome his fear of women.

– Musical highlight: “Sweet Thing” by Rufus and Chaka Khan (because the title of the song is the pet name that Phelps gives to all of his lovers)

More American Graffiti (1979) review-a brilliant, acid trip of a sequel

Lately, it seems like the Internet’s most valuable currency isn’t Bitcoins or Instagram likes; it’s Star Wars hot takes.

One of the more thought-provoking topics to emerge from this ongoing discourse is whether or not the franchise suffered because series creator George Lucas wasn’t on writing duties or sitting in the director’s chair after he sold it to Disney.

While I don’t want to add to that speculation, I thought it would be interesting to talk about another much-maligned sequel to a Lucas property: More American Graffiti (1979).

For those of you who don’t know, the original American Graffiti (1973) was Lucas’ big claim to fame before he created the most popular media franchise in the history of human civilization.

But in stark contrast to the sweeping scale and sci-fi bombast of the original Star Wars, American Graffiti is a small, intimate coming-of-age story that centres on a group of California youth in 1962 who just graduated high school and are on the cusp of early adulthood.

The film follows these kids during one hectic night and morning, where they get into street races, fall in love, and decide if they even want to go to college, all set to a period-appropriate rock ’n’ roll soundtrack.

Thanks to Lucas’ uncanny ability to capture the sights and sounds of the early baby boomer generation, the film went on to gross $140,000 million off of a $777,000 budget, which paved the way for the Hollywood outsider to bankroll his ambitious space opera.

I don’t have to tell you what happened when Star Wars (later dubbed Episode IV: A New Hope) finally came out in May 1977, but suffice it say that Lucas got very busy, which forced him to put other projects on the backburner.

Because of this, when a sequel to American Graffiti was in development Lucas only served as an executive producer (and uncredited editor), handing off directing/writing duties to Bill Norton.

Rather than just rehash the same format, Norton decided to take this sequel into new and interesting directions, following the original film’s characters (except Richard Dreyfuss’ Curt) across four different New Year’s Eve celebrations from 1964 to 1967.

When More American Graffiti was eventually released in 1979, it was savaged by critics, with many calling this new structure “confusing,” “pointless” and “a mess.” Currently, the film holds a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes (based on 10 reviews) and a not-so-great 5.3/10 user rating on IMDB.

Having recently watched this film for the first time, I do wish people would give More American Graffiti a second shot, since it’s genuinely one of the most creatively ambitious sequels I’ve ever seen.

First let’s talk about the film’s aforementioned structure.

Going into the movie blind, I’ll admit that splitting the story into four segments did catch me by surprise and took some getting used to.

Not only do these storylines happen simultaneously (constantly switching back and forth) but they’re also shot in their own unique style and aspect ratio.

The opening segment in 1964 follows now professional drag racer John Milner (Paul Le Mat) and is shot using a wide angle, stationary camera that was typical of 1950s exploitation cinema.

Terry the Toad’s (Charles Martin Smith) attempts to survive the jungles of Vietnam in 1965 are captured using a handheld, 16mm camera.

The psychedelic adventures of Debbie Dunham (Candy Clark) in 1966 San Francisco are probably the most experimental sections of the film, since the director utilizes multiple split-screen camera angles to depict the character’s wild, drug-fueled hippie lifestyle.

Thankfully, the movie settles down for the final segment in 1967 California, where the buttoned-down, domesticated Steve and Laurie (Ron Howard and Cindy Williams) get swept up in a violent student protest.

After cycling through this process a couple times, you’ll quickly find that this visual style is not just some dumb gimmick.

In fact, this kind of filmmaking elevates More American Graffiti from being a cheap, cash-grab sequel to something that expands on the story of the original while also maintaining its own unique voice.

For one thing, these contrasting filmmaking styles kept me engaged through the entire 110-minute runtime, since there was always something new and exciting to gawk at.

At the same time, Norton manages to exercise some restraint in the editing department and gives each scene just enough room to breathe before jumping ahead in time.

The contrasting aspect ratios also do a great job of telling you what year it is without the need to artificially slap a distracting title card on the screen every time the setting changes.

Plus, on a creative level, I just have to admire the balls it must have taken to greenlight such a weirdo sequel in the first place.

I imagine the filmmakers were seriously tempted to simply replicate the structure of the first film, where all the action takes place within a couple hours. Maybe the characters from American Graffiti come back together for a high school reunion or a wedding, and hijinks ensue from there.

But instead, Norton and company decided to split these characters up (for the most part) and scatter their stories across different stretches of time and geographic space, robbing the audience of the warm nostalgic comradery that made the original American Graffiti so popular in the first place.

To bring the conversation back to Star Wars for a second, that was a very Rian Johnson move.

But the fractured nature of More American Graffiti serves a very specific thematic purpose, since it’s meant to reflect the tumultuous, divisive nature of the United States in the 1960s.

Not only are most of the characters thrust into some of the biggest political and cultural touchstones of that era (like Vietnam, the hippie music scene and student protests) but we, the audience, view them all happening at the same time.

And while this mixture of sights and sounds can be slightly disorienting, it paints a really beautiful picture a bunch of people trying to find their way in an increasingly complicated and chaotic world.

Film critic Nathan Rabin actually sums up the experience better than I ever could in a write-up for The Dissolve, saying: “More American Graffiti is about the fracturing of a culture, and the simultaneously exciting and terrifying freedom of that splintering.”

Even if you hate this stylistic approach, most American Graffiti fans will at least appreciate the sequel’s stellar soundtrack.

Following up the original’s famous set list is no easy task, since it featured pioneering rock ’n’ roll figures like Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly.

However, Norton managed to cultivate a set list that perfectly encapsulates how that same genre of music evolved throughout the1960s, with songs from counterculture icons like Bob Dylan, The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, and The Byrds.

The film’s cast is equally strong, which is impressive considering they could have easily phoned in their performances for (if we’re being honest) a sequel that no-one was really asking for.

Instead, these actors, thanks in part to Norton’s script, are fully committed to injecting new depth into their characters.

High school nerd Terry the Toad finally grows a spine in the jungles of Vietnam. Debbie’s impulsive personality finally bites her in the ass and she is forced to take on more responsibility. John realizes that his “cool guy” status from high school is quickly fading. Meanwhile, Steve and Laurie’s conservative values are put to the test when they witness the horrors of police brutality first-hand.

I’m also thoroughly impressed with how Norton managed to recruit pretty much all the major players from American Graffiti to reprise their roles, even down to minor characters like the members of the Pharaohs street gang.

Heck, he even got Harrison Ford to make a brief cameo as Bob Falfa even though the next Star Wars movie was looming on the horizon.

To bring this conversation back full circle, I guess watching More American Graffiti was exactly the palette cleanser I needed after sitting through The Rise of Skywalker.

Instead of playing it safe and relying on cheap nostalgia to tell your story, this Lucas sequel decided to challenge its audience by going way off the reservation and taking some real creative risks.

Of course, this approach didn’t really work out in the short term, given the thrashing it received from critics at the time.

And More American Graffiti definitely has its fair share of rough edges that even I can’t excuse, with some obvious production gaffs (like obviously fake props and a visible camera man being in frame at one point) that somehow making it into the final cut.

But I’ll definitely take a messy film full of heart and interesting ideas over a glorified corporate line item any day of the week, although I’m worried that Disney is choosing the latter approach when it comes to all their newly acquired intellectual properties.

Oh, and on an unrelated topic: here’s my 50-page master’s thesis on why The Last Jedi is [content redacted].