Run Ronnie Run

A swamp of wasted comic ingenuity, Run Ronnie Run has about 10 minutes of clever, even hilarious parody to its name before being cleaned out of laughs. For the remainder of the time, this Sundance handout spun off from David Cross and Bob Odenkirk's hilarious HBO program Mr. Show With Bob and David, stumbles along, confusing with trendy and audacious all the infantile throwaways and pop culture references that it tediously stretches to frame its running time. Camouflaged behind a bulletproof mullet, Cross plays the Ronnie in question, a beer-gorging deadbeat hayseed who whiles away the hours wreaking havoc on his Georgia hometown. His exploits are caught on tape by a Cops-like reality show called Fuzz, and he's noticed by pathetic infomercial personality/inventor Terry Twillstein, played by an astute Bob Odenkirk, who sees Ronnie's popularity with lowbrow viewers. He promotes the idea to TV executives for a show in which he is arrested in a different city each week. The show becomes phenomenally successful, making Ronnie rich and famous, surprise surprise.

But while the text isn't up to Mr. Show's lofty benchmark, some big laughs do emerge, as when Hollywood stars beseech Ronnie to rob them, or when Ronnie's one semblance of soul-searching on death row involves his last meal: waffles, squarely nosing out corn dogs. Cross and Odenkirk, who ultimately disowned this movie, hardly reproduce a shred of the wit of any one of various sundry sketches from their show, but David Koechner has some time here to do his thing as an illiterate alcoholic redneck moron and Sarah Silverman Program regular Brian Posehn is one of the writers.

Ronnie's guilelessness is essentially a one-dimensional gag. Cross can be hilarious, but he's just more fitting when he's bald. Here his act is eclipsed by the innumerable celebrity cameos such as Jack Black, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, John and Rebecca Romijn Stamos, Ben Stiller, Jeff Goldblum, Mandy Patinkin, Kathy Griffin, etc., and episodes which don't follow at all from the premises, including one that reveals the "gay conspiracy" overseen by Patrick Warburton and forces them to give up their plot for world domination. It's completely non-sequitary in the film, and it's particularly memorable.

Why on Earth would the guys who gave us one of the smartest "premise" based comedy shows on television choose such an easy target for their first film? New Line's tampering is not the reason the film isn't that great, guys. It's the idea to begin with. A parody of red necks? Ohhhhh, how cutting edge. THAT'S never been done before. The guys seem to have gone out of their way to play two really tired characters, in a tired situation (Reality TV) that we've seen parodied over and over again in other places and are now about as fresh and funny as a "Full House" rerun. This is a really sad loss 'cause I doubt it's likely anyone will poney up the money now to give these guys a second chance.

Also, the cameos. Great stuff with Jeff Goldblum, and Jack Black's bit is hysterical, but usually the famous people are just standing around without a single amusing thing to do ( Sarah Silverman and Gary Shandling immediately come to mind).

Ronnie is a mullet headed redneck who lives in a trailer, drinks a lot of beer, raises hell and gets arrested. A failed infomercial pitchman sees Ronnie and decides to have him star in a new reality-based TV show where Ronnie goes from city to city, gets drunk and in trouble, and ultimately ends up getting arrested. It's like "Joe Dirt" meets "Cops".

The show becomes a big hit. Ronnie gets to mingle with the stars, buy a big house and finally nail the hot girl who is in his favorite beer advertisement.

Ronnie begins to feel the hallowness of his fame and then goes through the stereotypical soul searching that we've seen in a lot of movies.

This movie had some great, almost classic moments. And I was loving it, up until the last 20 minutes. It's another example of a movie that would have benefitted from a re-edit or two. The story just ran out of steam.

There are a boatload of very funny celebrity cameos, some uncredited. Also, there is an animation at the beginning of the movie which looks like a classic 1950's style "Please refrain from talking during the movie" cartoon, but it ends up being anything but. It looks like a Cricfalusi animation and it's pretty funny.

Look for the fake music video which also is very good.

Also, the ending credits have a few surprises including a great send up of Jackie Chan closing credits.

Supposedly, this movie failed to get a distributor. It is certainly strong enough to be released. I just wish they'd punch up the ending.

I give it a 6.5 to 7 out of 10. The team that made this movie is certainly talented. Be sure to check out the memorable quotes.

For years I've loved the work of David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, and certainly enjoyed Mr. Show, probably the best television comedy show since Kids in the Hall went off the air. However, when Bob and David themselves set out to warn people how awful this movie was, you KNOW you had to be worried. The fellas claim that studio interference from New Line made the production problematic and that the cut of the movie they wanted was largely sabotaged in favor of trying to compete with your usual "Cooter Patrol" style Hollywood comedy in the vein of utter retardedness like, say, American Pie. In the end, they claimed that Run Ronnie Run had been turned into a piece of garbage, and they are RIGHT. I don't care how deep your love for Bob and David runs...avoid this movie. Everything clever, subtle, and interesting about their comedy is sabotaged in this flick. Yes...it has it's moments. There's a few scenes here and there where I did honestly laugh. But all together, that totaled maybe 5-8 minutes of the rest of the flick. I love these guys but I have to be honest...something screwed up here. Whether it was New LIne or Bob and David just not being too good at a movie-length format, this just isn't what Mr. Show fans want to see.

I am one of the biggest Mr. Show fans on Earth, I watched the first episode when it originally aired, and every episode after that. I've bought the 1st through 3rd season DVD's, and I'm convinced it is the funniest show ever. So when you know the comedy potential of Bob and David, then you see this movie, you wonder what they were thinking. Even now if you visit their site they will tell you themselves it was a horrible movie. You are just left wondering, how can these two hilarious guys not make a hilarious movie? I loved the Ronnie Dobbs segments on Mr. Show, but even when I heard they were going to turn it into a movie long ago, I couldn't imagine how they planned to stretch it out into a full-length film. Having seen the film it's apparent they didn't know how to either. The funniest parts of the film we've already seen in the Ronnie skits on Mr. Show. There were a few chuckles in the movie, but Mr. Show made me roll on the floor. There are a few Mr. Show characters in the film other than Ronnie and Terry, such as "Three Times One Minus One" the reporter Tim McCracken, and possibly a few others, I forget. The funniest part of the movie was Jack Black and his musical number, but it had nothing to do with the plot of the film itself, and this wasn't even one of Jack's best performances.