Andy Dick and Patrick Warburton appear on screen in top comedic form in the Independent feature, Rock Slyde, which premiered at the AFI Dallas Film Festival this past week.
The idea for the off-beat film was inspired by the handsome director's mother, Chris Dowling noted on the red carpet, with a sly smile on his face.
"Can't you make a movie that doesn't have any violence or gratuitous sex in it," she pointedly asked the talented screenwriter one day.
The Clark Kent look-a-like rose to the occasion by penning a script that hits the funny bone more often than not.
Patrick Warburton (private dick Rock Slyde) adeptly plays the role to the hilt - with a droll unaffected approach, mind you - that ultimately takes a poke at the film noir genre it sprang from.
Andy Dick - who sports a beard in this part - is hilarious in a zany role that is decidedly off-beat.
Part of the reason the cult figure the TV personality plays on screen succeeds so admirably is due to inpeccable timing on the part of Dick and his innate ability to create a character that resonates with its own truth within a specific context.
Unfortunately, Rock Slyde - the movie - lags at times.
Although Dowling is a competent writer with original ideas, the script should have been tightened a smidgen, to ensure lazy minds didn't wander a tad.
In fact, when I exchanged notes with a couple of other industry-types, they admitted they - too - started to snooze a little about three-quarters of the way through Slyde beneath the floodlights.
In its current incarnation, the full-length feature tends to lurch and burp a bit; then, roll over and die a second or two, before unexpecedly picking up again as it races to a hilarious finale.
In many respects the entertaining piece of fluff is uneven - but fixable - in my estimation.
For a low-budget feature (shot on an old soundstage at Sunset Blvd & Gower Street in the heart of Hollywood) that wrapped in a six short creatively-stuffed weeks, I found the production values to be surprisingly rich.
Warburton and Dick also manage to rise above the material and make it an inviting popcorn movie film buffs on the edge of the mainstream may be able to warm up to.
Teens may guffaw a lot, too, quite possibly transforming the little-movie-that-could into an unexpected hit come the lazy days of summer.
Of course, such a scenario is only within reach, if distribution is forthcoming, and a visionary studio backs Rock Slyde with eye-catching promos geared toward the market, of course!
1 thumb & 1 half-knuckle up!
