Meet Wally Sparks

[1997, Movie]

Meet Wally Sparks: Review

Thirty years into his career and Rodney Dangerfield still gets no respect... and if he keeps turning out crap like this, he's not likely to anytime soon. No matter: Who needs respect as long there's a paying audience dopey enough to keep shouting back "How fat was she?" Here Dangerfield basically reprises the role that made him a bankable movie star: CADDYSHACK's ribald vulgarian, the exceedingly crude Regular Guy who crashes his way into high society and wreaks havoc among the elite. There's a plot in here somewhere -- Dangerfield is a no-holds-barred TV talk-show host who somehow winds up living at the stately home of a very conservative Southern governor (David Ogden Stiers) -- but it's all just a pretext for the star to let loose with his distinctively rank brand of smutty humor. The honesty of the movie's celebration of all things tasteless is almost appealing -- only not much of it's funny, and one can't help but feel that an opportunity to poke fun at bourgeois pretensions has been wasted for the sake of a fart joke. Just when you're sure things have gone far enough -- and Michael Bolton soulfully crooning "Georgia on My Mind" is pretty far -- the movie unabashedly makes a play for the heartstrings. Now that's vulgar. --Ken Fox