Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Saturday Night Live is looking back on its illustrious past. The show has had its ups and downs, and those highs and lows have transferred into nearly a dozen films based on skits from the show.
The latest, Tim Meadows’ “The Ladies Man,” represents a lower part of the SNL Studios spectrum, settling below “The Blues Brothers” but fortunately above “It’s Pat.”
Starring Meadows as the radio talk show host Leon Phelps, this film does the SNL skit some justice but overall doesn’t prove to be as good of a skit-adaption as past movies, such as “Wayne’s World.”
Despite some funny one-liners (most of which are shown in the trailers for the film), this movie proves itself to be merely a very long skit - one that is only funny for about a quarter of the jokes.
The dull story follows Phelps in his hunt to find a new job after his racy radio show gets him and his producer, played by Karyn Parsons (“The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”), fired from their lofty positions during the 2:30 a.m. time slot.
Meadows, who has been a regular cast member on SNL since 1992, debuted “The Ladies Man” skit in 1997 and was hard not to like in the role. He is the ladies man. Everything in the film that draws on this idea is fine, but it’s the things that remind the audience of a live skit that ruin the film.
The movie seems so quiet. For having a soundtrack featuring 19 songs, it is weird when most of the scenes are without music - like a very poor live skit.
As for the other characters, they are, in fact, funny. Will Ferrell (“A Night at the Roxbury”) and Lee Evans (“There’s Something about Mary”) are, as always, hilarious. And this proves to be the prime dilemma. Each singular character is great in his or her own way. They are funny and bring out a few unexpected laughs, but not enough to save the movie.
For this being Meadows’ first major film, it isn’t a total loss. He could still rise and sit atop the SNL mountain with successors Adam Sandler, Mike Myers, Chevy Chase and Steve Martin, just to name a few.
But, on the other hand, maybe that chance won’t come for the ladies man.
