Hey folks, Harry here... No word on whether or not the entire West Coast AICN crew's cameos are still intact, but it does seem like the movie is very much on the right path... which is good... Now I've never seen an episode, but I have to say that these early reviews seem to indicate something really special. We'll see...
Harry :
I read one of your articles about Run Ronnie Run the other day, which said that they would be screening it in a few weeks. Well Christmas came early because they showed it in Pasadena last night. This movie rocked! Much of the production team was there, including the cast, and the theater was packed. I judge movies on two criteria... 1. My reaction and 2. Audience reaction. In this case, both were pretty much the same... lots of laughing. This movie proved to everyone that it will be a laugh fest once it is edited down a bit. I won't get too much into plot, because of the plethora of articles that have been appearing on your site these past few months. So I'll just go into the characters. To start out with, David Cross is fantastic. He plays Redneck better in the first two seconds than it looks like David Spade can in his enitre Joe Dirt movie. The audience loved David's character Ronnie. Lots of laughs and lots of clapping. I thought that he had the perfect mix of stupidity, violence, drunkeness, charm, and even cuteness, not to mention a great Mullet. Odenkirk plays Terry, a down on his luck tyipcal English Infomercial guy who exploits Ronnie's run-ins with the law. Terry is not as complete a character as Ronnie, but the movie is called Run Ronnie Run for a reason. There are some really good scenes with Terry and Ronnie, especially when Terry dos the "Infomercial thing" when he is talking with his hands and really changing his vocal patterns. The supporting cast is very funny, especially the cameos. This movie had more cameos than the Thin Red Line and Cannonball Runn I & II combined! There are two music numbers that I hope get trimmed down a bit, but not cut, and there is a fight scene at the end, that despite being funny, was actually shot very well and kicked ass. All in all, this was a really funny movie - nothing ground breaking, but clever and well put together ( once the editor trimms some more fat, just to get a beter flow for the film ). It seemed that the crowd there was in agreement with me that this may not be a must see, but if you will be looking for some good laughs in the not so distant future, go see Run Ronnie Run.
Ruprect
Then here's a review from a long time MR SHOW fan... and he was expecting the sun the moon and the stars... let's see how he feels now...
So, I just got out of the Pasadena California screening of 'Run Ronnie Run' The Mr. Show movie. Let me say, I'm a BIG Mr. Show fan so I had really high expectations. The movie pretty much delivered.
The story is about Ronnie (David Cross) Dobbs, a white trash loser who is constantly getting arrested, actually he is the most arrested person ever on the TV show Fuzz (Cops). A failing late night TV gadget salesman, Terry (Bob Odenkirk) Terwilliger sees the cult celebrity on Fuzz one day and sees a star in Ronnie. He soon convinces Ronnie to come with him to Hollywood and become a star. The two pitch Ronnie as a reality show to TV executives where he will get himself arrested on camera every week. The network agrees and Ronnie is an immediate TV hit. Ronnie soon falls into the pitfalls of being a huge celebrity and forgets what it is to be a hick fellon. In the end Terry must show him the way back to being the white trash hood America loves.
It was a really funny movie that was torn between being your typical Saturday Night Live movie (Superstar, Ladies Man) and an amazing Mr. Show type film where you cut to bizarre skits and hilarious intersticials. I can tell you the crowd laughed hardest when things got weird (there was even a laugh track meter in the floor below us). Hopefully they cut out about 20% of the "story" stuff and just add in more whacked out comedy. Another down side of being a Mr. Show fan is that I've seen about 80% of the skits in the movie already from the show (not as well done as the TV show may I ad).
There are an ASS LOAD of cameos including Gary Shandling, Ben Stiller, Jeff Goldblum(the best one), South Park's Trey and Matt and the list goes on and on. My final note is on Troy Miller's directing of the film. Pretty boring for a Mr. Show movie. The best part of the TV show are the huge sudden flips in filmmaking techniques and character types. But Miller does a poor job of making the genres of the filmmaking change from skit to skit.
And one final note. Paul F. Thompkins is NOT in the film at all. He was my favorite cast member on the TV show and he is the only one that doesn't make the trek from TV to the big screen for the movie. Oh well. So if Bob or David end up reading this, PLEASE PUT PAUL THOMPKINS IN IT
SOMEWHERE! And add more wierd skits. Bottom line, I give this movie a 6 of 10 for Mr. Show fans and 9 of 10 for people who have never seen Mr. Show and won't know what they're missing.
-Chuck Russel
Now the next review is EXTREMELY SPOILER FILLED, so you may very well want to skip this one, he did like it quite a bit though... read at own risk.....
Hey Harry,
I caught the test screening of Run Ronnie Run tonight and since I've seen it mentioned here several times, I thought you might be interested in a review.
Now I have to start out by saying that I have never seen an episode of Mr. Show and I know next to nothing about it. That said, if the show was as strained in it's attempts at humor as this film, it's no wonder it was canceled.
As a film, it's little more than a series of opportunities for satire strung together by a very weak story. (For a summary of the plot, see the end of the review)
Some of the situations are indeed funny. An older gentleman (I think the guy from the outpost.com commercials) occasionally interrupts the story to very humorous effect. He tells us about how sometimes, scenes are cut from movies so that they can achieve the rating demanded by the studio. He then shows a scene from "a classic children's film" that was cut for just such a reason. It's a bunch of dancing chimney sweeps (a la Mary Poppins) singing a song called "Kick her in the Cunt!" with an animated squirrel. I'll let your imagination fill in the blanks...
To the film's credit, there are about five scenes like the above that are extremely offensive, but very funny. But in a film nearly two hours long, I wanted more scenes that hit the mark.
A survivor parody for example had people being stabbed and eaten as they were voted out. Hardly a revolutionary idea since survivorsucks.com has been using that premise for it's site since the original premiered.
I don't want to be too hard on the film since they have ample opportunity to cut what wasn't funny and keep what was, but they do have their work cut out for them. Plus the story had a very vague beginning, middle or end but with some re-editing, this also could be improved.
The performances were all solid and there were seemingly hundreds of celebrity cameos. All the leads were not familiar to me but I assume they were all alumni of "Mr. Show".
This film seems to have a complex... it can't decide if it wants to actually tell a story, or just be a series of parodies and skits. I almost wish it had chosen the latter because after a while, the main characters were the least interesting thing about the film. Almost like a SNL skit that tells the same joke 30 different ways and expects us to laugh as hard every time. By the end, the audience was almost completely silent.
With work, this film has potential and I like it better than some of the other offensive/gross out comedies of late. But if you pressed me, my gut says wait for video on this one...
That's it for the review, but if you want to know the plot, look below... stop reading if you don't want the story ruined...
The plot revolves around Ronnie Dobbs, a redneck from a small town in Georgia infamous for raising hell with his idiot friends. Ronnie's exploits frequently land him on a show called "Fuzz", a "cops"-like show. A sheriff in the town fills the role of the antagonist, promising to put Ronnie away and throw away the key when he becomes Governor.
Meanwhile in Hollywood, a failed gadget inventor and infomercial producer sees a tape of Ronnie and travels to Georgia to sign him up for a new reality series. After an extended scene of destruction by Ronnie, they both end up in jail. The producer strikes a deal with the Sheriff to take Ronnie away from Georgia forever in exchange for their freedom from jail.
The producer creates a show in which Ronnie does what he does best, raising hell and getting arrested in a new city every week. The show is a huge hit and Ronnie has to juggle his new fame, and a love interest named Tammy from his home town.
For some unknown reason, the producer has a complete lapse and allows Ronnie to return to his home town to see Tammy where he is promptly arrested by the sheriff (now governor) and sentenced to death.
Then the cast members of a show called "Eliminator" a survivor-type show that was killed in the ratings by Ronnie's reality series, takes the governor's son hostage and demands Ronnie be released from death row so that THEY can kill him.
The son is a video game fanatic, particularly of martial arts games, and proceeds to kick his kidnapper's asses using moves copied from the games.
Ronnie is freed from jail but his show is ruined and so he goes back to Georgia. Cut to five years later, the producer is back to selling his crappy inventions and runs across Ronnie. He begs him to go back to raising hell and Ronnie finally agrees, but instead of getting arrested, he puts himself in extremely dangerous situations, and then harasses the people that try to rescue him.
The show is once again a huge hit and he and Tammy all live happily ever after.
The Garnisher
