Metacritic reviews

This sleek and sunny comedy is an all-too-rare example of smart and inventive Hollywood filmmaking.

The number of levels on which these pros trade on their diminished reputations makes the movie an inside joke rather than a funny one. If Spade thinks otherwise, he's nucking futs.

The film is intermittently funny and strangely intermittent.

Maintaining a winking distance from his comic persona, Mr. Spade radiates a cunning show-business cynicism that lets you know he's aware that he's slumming to make a buck.

The best thing about star and co-writer David Spade's Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star is the end-title sequence, a big, sassy sing-along in which dozens of old TV child stars spew out defiant jokes about their old careers and fame's fickle fingers.

Whether his character is happy, sad, angry or scared, Spade affects precisely the same knowing smirk and sarcastic delivery. This one-note style makes him a funny stand-up comedian. But in a role, it's usually pure amateur hour.

Occasionally funny, cameo-speckled marshmallow.

Spade can still be funny when he lets himself be mean, and Dickie Roberts shows glimmers of that dynamic, but they're muscled out by lazy slapstick and maudlin stuff.

Four chuckles and a lively final-credits sequence are a mighty poor score for 99 minutes of alleged comedy, and the sentimental stuff is even worse.

When the movie's not playing stupid, it's aiming for sickly sweet sincerity. It's such a jarring and inevitably juvenile juxtaposition it comes off like a Hallmark card parody written by the staffers at "Cracked."