Corky Romano (2001) Touchstone/Comedy RT: 86 minutes Rated PG-13 (drug and sex-related humor, language) Director: Rob Pritts Screenplay: David Garrett and Jason Ward Music: Randy Edelman Cinematography: Steven Bernstein Release date: October 12, 2001 (US) Cast: Chris Kattan, Vinessa Shaw, Peter Falk, Peter Berg, Chris Penn, Fred Ward, Richard Roundtree, Matthew Glave, Roger Fan, Dave Sheridan, Michael Massee, Vincent Pastore, Zach Galifianakis. Box Office: $25.3 million (US)
Rating: NO STARS!!!
In my not-at-all humble opinion, It’s Pat: The Movie is the worst SNL sketch-to-movie adaptation. The worst movie starring an SNL cast member is a different story. It’s a broader category meaning more options. There are so many bad ones to choose from- e.g. Nothing But Trouble, Clifford, The Animal, Jack and Jill, etc.- but the winner of this booby prize is Corky Romano, a desperately unfunny gangster spoof starring Chris Kattan in the eponymous role, the black sheep of a family of mobsters who goes undercover inside the FBI to destroy their case against his father (Falk, Murder by Death). I wish somebody had gone undercover at Disney and destroyed the script before it got the green light. It is a STIN-KER-OO!
Kattan, you may recall, is better known as one half of the club-hopping, head-bobbing Butabi Brothers (the other being Will Ferrell), a pair of recurring SNL characters who got their own lousy movie A Night at the Roxbury a few years earlier. I never found him especially funny on SNL. His recurring characters- e.g. male exotic dancer Mango, monkey man Mr. Peepers, Goth teen Azrael Abyss- typically got on my nerves. He’s not much better in Corky Romano. In fact, he’s approximately 150% worse. His spastic, screeching performance as the title character isn’t the next best thing to torture, it IS torture. Corky is so incredibly annoying, it’s a wonder his family didn’t have him whacked before he reached puberty. Looking at him now, it’s possible he’s still in puberty.
The FBI has built a strong, informant-based case against mob boss Pops Romano, head of the Romano crime family. The stress causes him to have a heart attack. His brush with death leads him to ask his estranged son Corky to return to the fold. This infuriates his other sons, illiterate meathead Paulie (Berg, The Last Seduction) and latent homosexual Peter (Penn, Reservoir Dogs). Corky, who opted to go into veterinary medicine instead of the family business, has always been an embarrassment to the family. He’s kind, gentle and doesn’t have a criminal bone in his body. He’s also extremely clumsy and obnoxiously good-natured. He’s the kind of happy idiot who sings along (badly!) to cheesy 80s songs on the radio while driving (badly!). His family can’t stand him, now they need his help.
In order for their infiltrate the FBI scheme to work, they need to send in somebody the feds don’t know as one of their own. HERE’S CORKY! Posing as “Agent Corky Pissant” (his brothers’ doing), he enters the office with the intention of grabbing the evidence and leaving immediately. Of course, it won’t be that easy. He keeps getting sidetracked by one thing or another relating to the case assigned to him by his new “boss”, Chief Schuster (Roundtree, Shaft). He’s further distracted by his growing attraction to fellow agent Russo (Shaw, Hocus Pocus), a literal ballbuster who draws her own undercover assignment as a sexy nurse. You don’t need any guesses to figure out where.
As can only happen in comedies as moronic as this, Corky bumbles, fumbles and stumbles his way to stardom at the office. His mistakes in the field invariably yield positive results earning him the respect of his “colleagues”. Take the scene where he’s sent to deal with a hostage situation. Somebody hands him a machine gun which, of course, he causes to fire wildly out of control through sheer ineptitude. Stuff gets blown up and it almost costs at least a dozen agents their lives but the bad guy is arrested. Before Schuster can tear Corky a new one, another agent announces that the bad guy’s gun is a toy. Naturally, the boss concludes that Corky knew this and acted on it. Good job, son. Everybody claps him on the back while his archnemesis Agent Brick Davis (Glave, The Wedding Singer) fumes and seethes. This scenario occurs more than once in Corky Romano. It’s not funny the first time or any time after that. It’s NEVER funny nor is anything else in this pathetic, labored attempt at comedy.
Corky Romano is the type of comedy that shamelessly begs you to laugh at it like the class clown who nobody finds funny. The physical comedy is especially bad. Let’s look at an early scene of Corky in the examining room at the vet’s office. Something causes him to knock something over. That makes him knock something else over. Then he knocks over another thing and so on until he’s demolished the place. If you look closely, you can see that these actions are deliberate. He’s intentionally knocking everything over as per the direction of Rob Pritts, the one-dud wonder responsible for this insult to comedy. As if this isn’t bad enough, a snake crawls up Corky’s pant leg while all this is going on and he doesn’t realize it until he’s in the waiting room with clients, the ideal time to open his fly and pull it out (the snake, I mean). Ha, ha, NOT!
Absolutely nothing works in Corky Romano. You know something’s amiss when not even Peter Falk can save it. He doesn’t appear to want to either. He plays his part on autopilot. He’s lying in a bed for most of his scenes, a perfect analogy for the lazy approach taken to the lame material by nearly the entire cast save for Kattan who really needs to cut back on the caffeine. Did I mention his character is also naïve and gullible? Until he’s apprised of the current situation, he didn’t know his family was in the crime business. He thought they were in landscaping. He’s an idiot, plain and simple. Not that anybody in Corky Romano is particularly intelligent. They’re not. Berg and Penn’s characters are stereotypical dumb, brutish Italian mobsters. Roundtree’s character seems to know just enough to always make the wrong decision. Shaw is never for a second convincing as a tough FBI agent. She looks good in a nurse’s uniform though.
The only interesting thing about Corky Romano is how it goes down in flames so quickly. It’s beyond repair within the first ten minutes. It’s obnoxious to a surreal level. Kattan is an annoying little twerp. I kept hoping somebody, anybody would shoot him and end the suffering of the audience. All attempts at humor feel forced. The scenes where CGI is used look weird and unsettling. Corky Romano exists in a vacuum where comedy is merely a concept. Nothing in it is actually funny; it’s a bad demonstration of the idea of comedy. Whatever it is, it’s something that should never have seen the light of day much less the inside of a theater. I’ll close by imparting these words of wisdom; DON’T… WATCH… IT!!!!
