Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star Review

Posted by Jeremy Wilson on 09.11.2011

I saw it so you don't have to.

Directed by: Tom Brady
Written by: Adam Sandler, Allen Covert & Nick Swardson

Bucky Larson: Nick Swardson
Kathy McGee: Christina Ricci
Miles Deep: Don Johnson
Dick Shadow: Stephen Dorff
J. Day: Ido Mosseri
Gary: Kevin Nealon
Jeremiah Larson: Edward Herrmann
Debbie Larson: Miriam Flynn

Rated R for pervasive crude sexual content, language and some nudity.
Running Time: 96 minutes




I thought about how I was going to start this review for a long time. At first, I was going to list all the movies that have come out in the last 2 months, or that are still in theaters, that are better than Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. However, that proved to be too long and so I am going in the opposite direction. Here are the films released (wide-release and limited) that are worse than Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star.

1) ....................................
2) ....................................
3) ....................................

(Hint: There are none).

To describe Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star as bad is an insult to bad movies. There all all kinds of those and some of them are so bad, they're good. Hell, most of the Happy Madison productions (of which this film is one) are bad, but Bucky Larson is something beyond even that low bar. This film makes Apollo 18 look like Apollo 13 (NASA jokes help ease the pain). In fact, I cannot recall the last time I personally saw a film this bad in theaters, but it has definitely been years. So having said all that, where do we start?

The film immediately starts with an offensive and unfunny montage of what life must be like in rural Iowa. It is disgusting and stupid, the worst of it involving peanut butter and bestiality. We then cut to the Larson family as Bucky has dinner with his parents and then heads on over to his neighbor's house to watch a porno. His friends “teach” him to masturbate and have fun mocking him until they all discover that Bucky's parents are the stars of the porno they are watching. Bucky just thinks this is swell, since “they're movie stars!” So Bucky takes all this to mean that it is his destiny to head to Los Angeles and become a “movie star.” The rest of the film consists of small penis jokes and gags. I stopped counting at around 100.

So much is wrong with Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star that I'll start with the most surprising and sad negative – the supporting cast. One of the great mysteries one ponders during the hour-and-a-half of the film's run-time is how in the world this movie got this cast. The answer, I would guess, is two-fold: 1) Actors need money as much as everyone else, and 2) Adam Sandler has some serious pull. This has “paycheck movie” written all over it for good, (mostly) talented people such as Christina Ricci, Kevin Nealon, Don Johnson, Stephen Dorff and Edward Herrmann. Ricci is hypnotically pretty and she is a very talented actress. She also has shown a willingness to stretch as an actress and do films that are a little off the beaten path (Pumpkin comes to mind). The nicest thing that can be said is that she tries. Really, really hard.

She plays Bucky's love interest, Kathy, as the most pure-of-heart, genuinely earnest girl in all the land. It just doesn't work. It clashes with the rest of the film and she tries a little too hard, especially in comparison to her co-star. The obligatory romance between she and Bucky is laid on so thick, not to mention being completely ridiculous, disingenuous, creepy and lacking in any entertainment value whatsoever, that it and she actually manage to make Bucky Larson worse. Ricci is starring in her own movie separate from Bucky Larson, one that happens to be a touching, uplifting drama in which a young Jersey girl has her dreams of being the best waitress in all the land shattered after a terrible hot soup incident banishes her to some crummy diner in L.A. Only when her porn-starring, idiotic, man-child “white knight” comes (literally) riding on his white horse to rescue her and open their very own steakhouse in the middle of Iowa will all her dreams come true. I kid you not.

Kevin Nealon plays the really angry roommate/neighbor who doesn't have one funny line in the entire movie. He pops up screaming something half-incomprehensible, cussing as much as possible and is simply uncomfortable instead of uncomfortably funny. How do you make Kevin Nealon unfunny? I didn't know that was possible. Don Johnson is utterly ludicrous as Miles Deep, the director who befriends and uses Bucky to rejuvenate his career. Apparently, a nebulous pill addiction and saying the “f-word” as a noun, verb, adjective and name is the film-makers' attempt at providing a little character development for Mr. Deep. Stephen Dorff as Dick Shadow is standard, over-the-top sleezeball, simply with more – many more – references to his genitalia and its shadow.

And then there is Nick Swardson. I am told that he is a stand-up comedian in addition to being a supporting and bit player in shows (Reno 911) and films. I have never seen Swardson's stand-up routine, but I have seen the extent of his career as a Hollywood leading man. This film is it; beginning, middle and end. To describe it as inauspicious would be a kindness that this film and Swardson's character/performance do not impart on its audience. Swardson is a fortunate man, having friends in high places who have a lot of clout and money, in addition to sharing comedic instincts. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Son has Adam Sandler's worst instincts written all over it (again...literally; Sandler is a credited co-writer with Swardson and Allen Covert). This film is like the much worse, more sickeningly sweet cousin of Sandler's very own Little Nicky. It also reinforces the inherent risks in stretching one of these sketch comedy “characters” into 90 or so minutes of Hollywood magic. It just doesn't work, especially for a completely unfunny character such as this.

Tom Brady (not that one) is as culpable as Swardson, Sandler and the rest of the cast and crew, as he fails at every turn to wring any laugh from the film's numerous running gags, slapstick setups or even the easily satirized porn industry. Eight years after directing The Hot Chick it seems Brady has learned little to nothing. There is an excruciating scene where Bucky wins a ton of awards at the big porn industry awards show, that includes Bucky thanking his parents, Kathy, Miles and the state of Iowa in what I suppose is an attempt at being overly heartfelt in hope of being funny. Like the rest of the film, it fails, yet goes on longer than 10 minutes. The “best” scene consists of a montage involving Bucky helping Kathy hone her waitress skills through various obstacle courses and a shot of Bucky starring as a Chaplin-esque character in a black-and-white porno. When a brief montage in the middle of your movie is the best sequence your film has to offer, you shouldn't get to helm another movie. If Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star is the end of Nick Swardson's career as a leading man, it should also herald the end of Tom Brady as a director. Three strikes (The Hot Chick, The Comebacks) and you're out.

The script is so lazy, it fell asleep about a half hour into the film. The overgrown man-child is nothing new to recent Hollywood comedies, but the stink of Bucky Larson may herald the end of that run. As mentioned above, I would estimate 2 out of every 3 “jokes” and “gags” were related to the smallness of Bucky's penis, including a bizarre condom-from-a-cut-off-straw bit that has to go down as one of the weirdest safe-sex plugs in history. The other third mostly have to do with Bucky's buckteeth. If that is your thing, then this is your movie, but be forewarned; there is very little funny or entertaining about this film. “90 minutes of silence” is how I'd describe the theater in which I saw it, where about 20-25 of us endured every excruciating minute. Other terms that come to mind are: vile, putrid, creepy, crude, repetitive, stale, one-note and boring. Bucky Larson is rated R, although lord only knows why they didn't go for the PG-13 and the young male audience that are always the target demographic for these kinds of pictures (see: every Happy Madison production of the past decade-plus). I would certainly not recommend this film for 10-year-olds (two of whom were behind me during the movie).

In conclusion, this movie sucks. That's about all I've got, but I'd like to quote the thoughts of one of the premier film critics in the country, A.O. Scott, whose review of Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star simply gave up about halfway through and sums it up better than anything I could think of ending on:

“This may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that.”


Jeremy Wilson can be found on Twitter @Jpwilson1984 and contacted via email at [e-mail]

The 411: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star is...ugh, why bother. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! When you are talking about a film this awful, scores tend to be a bit arbitrary. So here's mine: (1/3 of a point for Christina Ricci...bless her heart she tried...a little too hard perhaps) + (1/3 of a point for the number of times I chuckled in 90 minutes) + (1/3 of a point for Don Johnson's hair...it's gloriously ridiculous) = 1.0. So there you go. When a film manages to make me feel sorry for Pauly Shore, something has most definitely gone awry. Whatever is BEYOND Not Recommended. “Super Duper Not Recommended” sounds about right.

Final Score:  1.0   [ Extremely Horrendous ]