It’s simply the answer to a what-if question no one asked: What if filmmakers were forced to construct a vehicle around every single SNL player, even those who feel especially well-suited to smaller roles? I chuckled a few times otherwise, the movie was a passing void. My reaction to it in 2021-I never caught it before now, despite my would-be SNL completism-was more numbness than disgust. As absurd as that sounds, there are hints of that (slightly) less ridiculous version of Corky in both Kattan’s performance (which, at least early on, isn’t quite as manic or sweaty as it could be) and the garish augmentations to it (lots of sped-up motion and badly computerized slapstick). In his obligatory life-in-comedy memoir Baby Don’t Hurt Me, Kattan writes about how Corky Romano began as a silly comedy with a genuinely endearing, optimistic lead character, before executive meddling broadened and coarsened the project. Anticipating the recent trend of SNL stars staying at the show rather than lighting out for the movies, Kattan did another two seasons at SNL and never had another shot as a leading man. Instead, this story of a misfit sibling in a crime family, conscripted into going undercover at the FBI to destroy evidence against his ailing father (Peter Falk), failed to vault Kattan into big-screen stardom. Or, it would have been, if Corky Romano had been a hit. Chris Kattan tries to fit in with more stoic people, can’t seem to control his body and makes a mess of things it was ever thus. But the movie also exists in a kind of timeless netherworld. There are parts of Corky Romano that function as a 20-year-old time capsule: Its CDR-on-shuffle soundtrack selections, for one, and its version of warmhearted progressive acceptance still involving casually dropping the f-slur and r-slur, for another. 2001 was, in fact, a banner year for those types of movies David Spade starred in Joe Dirt, while Rob Schneider was downgraded from the titular antics of Deuce Bigalow to just plain The Animal (the anti-branding worked it was the biggest hit of the bunch). The release of South of Heaven approximately coincides with perhaps the least auspicious 20th anniversary of 2021: On October 12, it will have been 20 years since Chris Kattan graced movie screens as the star of Corky Romano, a comedy from the Adam Sandler school of naming the movie after a zany comic character who will be introduced via ad campaign before braying, mugging and floundering their way into America’s heart. Or maybe this is because comedy vehicles for Saturday Night Live stars, even some of the most popular ones, barely exist anymore. Maybe this is because Sudeikis wants to stretch his acting muscles with something vastly different in tone from Ted Lasso, SNL or Horrible Bosses. But his October movie, debuting in a few theaters and on streaming, is a small one, a noir-ish crime drama called South of Heaven. It’s not as if Sudeikis is an unknown quantity in movies he’s starred in several hit comedies like We’re the Millers and Horrible Bosses. 20 or maybe even ten years ago, a movie Sudeikis shot in the wake of Ted Lasso’s first season, premiering at the end of Ted Lasso’s second season, would be a big comedy vehicle designed to capitalize on his recent success. Jason Sudeikis just finished up the second season of his acclaimed comedy Ted Lasso, for which he won an Emmy, and he’s returning to host Saturday Night Live, his old stomping ground, later in October.
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