Dickie Roberts - Former Child Star Reviews
Top Critic
Child is father to the man in this often funny, but just as often ham-fisted, untrue Hollywood story.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
You sense Spade is scared of what finding too much of himself in Dickie might mean.
Ouch! Spade goes sweet and gooey.
| Original Score: 2/4
Just a platform for Spade to tell smutty jokes to kids, fall off bicycles, puncture waterbeds, and, oh yes, learn the real meaning of family.
This movie is better than Lost and Found and Joe Dirt, but that's like saying a kick in the shins is better than a poke in the eye or a kick to the groin.
I often found myself laughing in spite of no one, not even myself.
The movie may appeal to fans of Spade's trademark smug and blandly disaffected comic style. And his delivery occasionally fits the material. But too many segments are flat and schlocky.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
This film is not the worst Spade has ever made. Remember Joe Dirt? Unfortunately, Dickie Roberts is just another forgettable film in his desperately-seeking -a-feature -film-career oeuvre.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
Anyone who grew up watching television or revels in every episode of E! True Hollywood Story (and you know who you are) should enjoy this movie.
| Original Score: 3/4
It's a standard joke in screwy teen comedies, but for some reason it seems kind of fresh here.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star is alert fun as long as it stays on Hollywood and Vine ... once Dickie is transplanted to suburbia, his movie becomes just another bland, heartfelt family-oriented comedy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
[A] laugh-free comedy.
| Original Score: 1/5
David Spade has two-thirds of a comic idea, and the jokes occasionally hit one of their hundred moving targets.
A schmaltz sand wich, with a fill ing of family-friendly sap smushed between two slices of very funny E! True Hollywood Story- style schtick.
| Original Score: 2/4
Feels like an amusing Saturday Night Live sketch that overstays its welcome by a good 90 minutes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
After a few initial pratfalls, the humor gives way to a saccharine pathos as Dickie is supposed to be growing up emotionally and becoming mutually attached to the family. Unbelievable conversations and stupid dance numbers replace the humor.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Every bit the disposable piece of piffle you think it's going to be, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star is nonetheless mildly enjoyable.
| Original Score: C
There are almost enough fresh elements to make the movie worthwhile.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
A lot of it is painfully unfunny, but often for bizarre if not entertaining reasons.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Made with consummate carelessness but with occasional moments of knowing humor.
Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star isn't so much a movie as a 90-minute Trivial Pursuit contest to name bit players from TV's distant past.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
There are laughs, to be sure, and some gleeful supporting performances, but after a promising start the movie sinks in a bog of sentiment.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
An amiable-enough Spade vehicle that lacks that certain something, but still manages to generate its fair share of giggles.
| Original Score: 3/5
A nauseating bowl of treacle about a man who discovers heaven in his own backyard.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/5
A joke that gets beaten to death in the first five minutes.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
This sleek and sunny comedy is an all-too-rare example of smart and inventive Hollywood filmmaking.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Narrated in the style of an E! True Hollywood Story, the film is intermittently funny and strangely intermittent.
| Original Score: 2/4
Dickie Roberts doesn't fail totally, but Spade is such a lackadaisical comedian that what does end up having any appeal at all always seems to have happened by accident.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
Director Sam Weisman knows the formulas and so do Spade and Wolf -- perhaps too well.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Generally succeeds -- in hit-and-miss fashion -- at bridging the gap between unlikable jerk and misunderstood good guy, though it's still something of a leap to leading-man territory.
