Michael Weatherly | Through the Shattered Lens

Wally Sparks (Rodney Dangerfield) is a talk show host with a program that is so raunchy that even Jerry Springer says, “At least this isn’t The Wally Sparks Show!”

Despite being a huge hit amongst teens and college students, the show is on the verge of being canceled by the head of the network, Mr. Spencer (Burt Reynolds, wearing a fearsome toupee). He is tired of Wally’s antics and he tells Wally and his producer, Sandy Gallo (Debi Mazar), that they have a week to make the show respectable.

Wally doesn’t know what to do. Wally Sparks act respectable? Wally’s a guy who don’t get no respect, no respect at all. Then Sandy finds a letter inviting Wally to attend a party at the home of Georgia Governor Floyd Patterson (David Ogden Stiers), a noted critic of the show. Hoping to get the interview that will save the show, Wally and Sandy head down south.

At the party, Wally acts like Wally and scandalizes all of the politicians and socialites. He also shares a bottle of whiskey with a horse and then rides the horse through the mansion. The party is a disaster but, after Wally claims that he can’t walk because of a spinal injury he suffered when he fell off the horse, the Governor allows him to recuperate in the mansion. Wally causes more chaos while also teaching the Governor’s wife (Cindy Williams) how to play strip poker and eventually exposing a scheme to blackmail the Governor into building a Confederate-themed amusement park.

Rodney Dangerfield playing a talk show host sounds like a great idea and there are a lot of talented people to be found in Meet Wally Sparks. Debi Mazar is an actress who should have appeared in a lot more movies and she and Rodney Dangerfield make a good team. The movie actually gets off to a funny start, with a montage of actual talk show hosts talking about how much they hate Wally Sparks and his show. Gilbert Gottfried has a cameo as a manic guest and Wally repeats some of Rodney Dangerfield’s classic jokes.

Unfortunately, the movie starts to fall apart as soon as Burt Reynolds threatens to cancel the show for being too lowbrow. No network executive has ever threatened to cancel a show that’s bringing in the ratings, regardless of how lowbrow it might be. Things get even worse after Wally goes to Atlanta and ends up staying there. The movie tries to recreate the Snobs vs. the Slobs dynamic of previous Dangerfield films but the Governor comes across as being such a decent man that there’s no joy to be found in watching his life get turned upside down. The movie has a surprisingly large number of subplots, including one about Wally’s son (Michael Weatherly) falling for the Governor’s daughter (Lisa Thornhill), but most of them go nowhere and just distract from the man who should have been the film’s main attraction, Rodney Dangerfield. By the end of the movie, even the usually irrepressible Dangerfield seems to have been neutered.

Rodney Dangerfield was a national treasure but Meet Wally Sparks was not the best showcase for his persona or his style of humor. Fortunately, Caddyshack and Back To The School are available to watch anytime that we need a good laugh and we want to show Rodney Dangerfield a little respect.

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 2000’s Cabin By The Lake! It can be viewed on YouTube.

Screenwriter Stanley Caldwell (Judd Nelson) has been hired to write a slasher film and, to the concern of both the film’s director (Bernie Coulson) and Stanley’s agent (Susan Gibney), Stanley is taking his time to write the script. Stanley says that he’s determined to write something more than just a typical “dead teenager” film. His script is about a murderer who kills his victims and then dumps them into a nearby lake. The killer spends his time tending his underwater garden.

What is taking Stanley so long? Stanley is doing research, which means that he’s kidnapping women, holding them prisoner in his cabin, and then dumping their bodies into the lake. Along the way, he’s observing how the victims act and he’s incorporating his research into his script. Though Stanley tells himself that he’s just doing research, it’s obvious that the script is no longer his main concern. Now, Stanley is just enjoying working in his garden.

Stanley’s latest victim is Mallory (Hedy Burress), a young woman who works at the town’s movie theater and who has a long-standing fear of the water. While Stanley is holding Mallory captive and studying both her and her fear of water, Deputy Boone Preston (Michael Weatherly) is searching for Mallory. And, of course, Stanley is running out of time to finish his script.

Cabin In The Lake was produced by and originally aired on the USA Network and, as a result, it has a much darker sense of humor than one might otherwise expect to find in a made-for-tv horror movie from 2000. Most of the humor centers around the pretensions of the film industry, with both Stanley and his film’s director trying to turn their little slasher movie into something more than just another dead teenager film. A good deal of the film centers around a group of special effects and makeup artists, who are recruited to help capture the killer and they’re all likable in their dorky way. The scenes of Stanley’s underwater garden achieve a certain dream-like grandeur and, as someone who has a morbid fear of drowning, I could certainly relate to Mallory’s fear of the water.

That said, this is one of those films where the parts are definitely greater than the whole. I think the film’s biggest problem was that Judd Nelson was a bit bland in the role of Stanley, flatly delivering his lines and barely bothering to show a hint of emotion. If anything, Nelson appears to be a bit bored with the film. Hedy Burress is sympathetic as Mallory and Michael Weatherly is believable as the upstanding deputy but a film like this lives or dies based on its villain and Nelson sleepwalks through the role. As well, for all the humorous moments that do work, it soon becomes obvious that this is a one-joke film and portraying Hollywood as being a place full of shallow people is not creative enough a joke to sustain an entire film. The end result is a film that is ultimately frustratingly uneven.