Rock Slyde

Saw this recently, and absolutely loved it! Cannot believe this is the directors first effort, shows the marks of an established and confident director...great script, great actors, hilarious set pieces - a movie to watch over again and again in order to pick up all the little throw away gags. Andy Dick was fantastic, and as has been mentioned in other reviews, Patrick Warburton plays the title character as a perfect straight comedy character.

Mixing two great story strands works well and keeps you interested all the way through, along with the great sight gags. Will have to look out for more from Mr Dowling in the future!

A down and out private detective (Patrick Warburton) engages in a turf war with a upstart quasi-religious cult, run by the Blessed Guru Bart (Andy Dick).

What I liked about this film was that Warburton had a role that was not terribly different in humor from "The Tick", possibly his best character ever. He has a wonderful voice and when used for comedy it really hits an audience in a way no other actor's voice can.

I also liked Eric Roberts being here. While he has fallen harder than almost any celebrity (his appearance in "The Dead Want Women" is lamentable) he does a great cameo here and I think it might almost be the last good comedy performance he has had (as of 2013).

"A laugh-out-loud send-up of Hollywood...and the film noir detective genre, "Rock Slyde" starts with what many big Hollywood films lack — a really good and very funny script.

Patrick Warburton as Rock Slyde, a cognitively clueless detective whose nose for crime is better than his noggin, was sad eyed, pitch perfect and endearing. Resisting the advances of femme fatale Rena Sofer's delicious Sara Lee because of a childhood spent watching "Soul Train" (but that's another story), Slyde faces down adversary cult leader Andy Dick (Bart of Bartology) to save his holdout office space in the ever-expanding Bartology building and rescue his brainwashed secretary. And if you think that sentence is pointedly pithy, "Slyde" is even more crammed full with over-the-top winks, asides and jokes including a cameo by Jason Alexander as a Jewish U.S. postal carrier enamored of Slyde's turn as an actor in a gay porn musical (but that too is another story).

"Rock Slyde" performances, cinematography, original score and songs (if you don't leave the theater singing, "swashbuckle me, swashbuckle, down on your knees," you're probably dead), and script are brilliant and of a piece — a carefully crafted piece that is a testament to creativity on the cheap — brilliance without big budgets. "

• Idyllwild Town Crier

First off I will say that the story didn't really have much going for it. So at that point I thought it would be hard to keep myself interested. But there was one thing that no matter what happened in the movie, always had me smiling. It was Patrick Warburton. He is an actor that has a very distinct voice that you will always remember. Every time he talked in the movie, I was laughing. Some of the dialog he used was cheesy, but worked since he had such a funny voice. There were some other interesting characters, but they were not as good. Andy Dick was the so called bad guy. It is hard to like Andy Dick as certain characters. He seemed to fit as this one though. The girl that was working for Warburton was Elaine Hendrix. I didn't like her as the character she was. She was a bit annoying. So overall if it wasn't for Warburton and some of his interesting and funny lines, I am not sure if I would of liked the movie at all.

"Patrick Warburton and Andy Dick ham up the detective genre. Warburton is Rock Slyde, a Smart Car-driving private dick so droll, so disaffected that he can't be bothered with come-ons from Rena Sofer's beautiful dame when he takes on her case to find out who's tailing her. Dick plays the wacky leader of The Cult of Bartology, whose main objective is to take over Slyde's office space to gain control of the building.

Director Chris Dowling takes full advantage of the genre's wide-open spaces for gags and comic allusions to film noir's past. And as the screenwriter, he chooses his shots and doesn't let the script fall into a punny mess.

Cameos from Jason Alexander, Jerry Cantrell, Brian Bosworth and others add to the fun. And Andy's real life followers will enjoy seeing him as a brunette."

-Marc Lee