BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR

BUCKY LARSON: BORN TO BE A STAR

The humor of this movie might be embraced the most by those who have little understanding of such sexual concepts like masturbation or intercourse. "Bucky Larson" is made for giggly thirteen-year-olds who ironically shouldn't be allowed to see this movie (especially for its hard R-rating). It's a movie that will lose a great chunk of ticket sales because its main demographic will have to buy "Contagion" tickets and then sneak in.

Stand-up comedian/the latest Adam Sandler squeeze Nick Swardson plays Bucky Larson, a simple Iowa young man who is unsure what do with his life when he is fired from his job at the grocery store (when his boss strangely hits himself and then blames Bucky). Depressed and unsure of what do with his life, his friends attempt to cheer him up by showing him a nude movie, something that Bucky had apparently never seen before.

Soon into the movie, he realizes that his parents (Edward Hermann and Miriam Flynn) are the porn stars in the film, and decides that his destiny must be to share their profession. He realizes this, of course, without having any notion of the industry, or knowing how to even masturbate.

When Bucky arrives in Los Angeles he is taken under the wing of small-town girl named Kathy (Christina Ricci), who is waiting at a dumpy diner after causing a horrific soup- burning accident at a previous job. Bucky becomes roommates with a person who lives in Kathy’s building, Gary, played by Kevin Nealon.

Bucky finds his greatest support in a veteran porn director named Miles Deep (Don Johnson), who realizes that Bucky's "small talent" will actually lead to big business, as everyone could now fantasize about "The cock you're glad you don't have."

As failed as his first leading movie might be, Swardson shows (along with his buried work in "Just Go With It") that he has character-actor potential. And as completely unbelievably alien Bucky might be to nearly everything in the world, he's at least a relatively fleshed out character. He's not just an imitation of a dumb boy from Iowa, and his thick accent isn't just a crutch.

In a movie that piles on the groan-causing gags and forgettable moments, Swardson makes Bucky into a relatively memorable being - for better or worse. Swardson certainly seems like he's already above and beyond Rob Schneider.

We're not really sure why Ricci's here, other than the fact that Bucky needs a love interest in order for this movie to properly write itself. It's nice seeing Ricci back on the big-screen (and not in something horrendous like "After.Life,") but she's wasted here as someone who never gets her own jokes. She's just someone submitting to this movie's stupidity.

Don Johnson might have had a small appearance in last weekend's "A Good Old Fashioned Orgy," but he has a larger part here. Unfortunately, it's just him dropping F- bombs thinking that if he repeats it enough it will make us laugh. Instead, his crassness is unsurprising, besides the fact that this is all coming from that guy from “Miami Vice.”

The most surprising aspect of the entirety of "Bucky Larson" comes from Nealon, who only has a handful of scenes but is strangely hilarious in each one. Nealon's performance has a perfect balance of rage, insecurity, and vulgarity to make it worthy of a laugh anytime he just shouts "FUCK YOU!" to Bucky, over the strangest things (grapes, milk, etc.)

Nearly every side character in "Bucky Larson" is given a long monologue in which they express some dramatic moment in their life, but these moments hardly make the audience laugh. Whenever the movie can't think of anything funny to say or do, it just resorts to making fun of Bucky's buckteeth, which becomes a dead horse punch line in the script. It's even the final joke of the movie, as his teeth form into "The End" right before the credits rescue this movie's viewers.

Appeasing the juvenile standards that it sets for itself, "Bucky Larson" has a vulgar vernacular of terms and phrases that wouldn't be remotely funny outside this movie, like "smell-garden" and "Shut your cock!"

The "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" soundtrack uses familiar songs that have all been heard elsewhere, especially from other sh*tty Adam Sandler comedies. Of course Journey's "Faithfully" is used, along with "California Love" by 2Pac. "Bucky Larson" tries to get a laugh with a brief sequence that features Hanson's "MMMBop," but it's a weak attempt.

My biggest laugh in “Bucky Larson” came from the extremely silent response that a joke concerning Bucky's high school - "Oh, my town didn't have a high school." Not even the folks who were there ironically could find anything funny in this line, along with many others.

Ignorance is the greatest weapon that a movie like "Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star" has. Even the title might be able to wrangle in some saps that think it's about a wannabe actor or musical performer. It relies on the ignorance of its (young) viewers to think that such silly situations like straw condoms are laughable, as opposed to terminally stupid. It relies on the ignorance of its character to construct the entirety of its humor.

One can imagine now 45-year-old Adam Sandler, Swardson, and their co-writer Allen Covert hunkering over their script and giggling to themselves constantly saying to themselves, "Get it?! It's funny that he wants to be a porn star because he has no idea about anything! Wait, I think this scene needs more monkey sex sounds."

"Bucky Larson" is a movie that giggles all the way through, but no one else is laughing. Its blitzkrieg of bombed jokes, met with dead silence from the audience, will give you the biggest laughs. -- NICK ALLEN, is also a film critic for The Scorecard Review and member of Chicago Film Critics Association

NICK ALLEN

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