Here’s the question you have to ask yourself—do you think Jiminy Glick is funny? If the answer is no, then you’ll have a hard time spending 90 minutes with the corpulent, star- struck celebrity interviewer in his debut film, Jiminy Glick in LaLaWood. But—if the answer is yes then, like me, you’ll be laughing yourself silly even while acknowledging the cheap looking movie is oftentimes just plain stupid.
But then it’s also, like Prime Time Glick (the Comedy Central series it’s based on) quite astute in skewering the obsessions of celebrity worship. With Martin Short’s bizarre creation of this sweat-drenched, ill-suit wearing, overly eager, obnoxiously all-over-the-place interviewer (while interviewing Kurt Russell, he maniacally confesses his love for Elvis and then turns serious when asking Russell if he knew at age 10 that Elvis’ daughter would marry Michael Jackson) the cult of celebrity is made surreal, repulsive and hilarious. Like Sacha Baron-Cohen’s Ali G character, Short’s Glick is a smarter-than- he-appears creation in that his shallowness underscores how asinine the typical, press junket, in-and-out interview frequently is (this coming from someone who’s seen this firsthand—watching weary actors answering the same stupid questions from a collection of “interviewers” who look like they just emerged from the shire).
And that he’s some freakish cross between a creepy Louie Anderson-like goody-goody with an old timey, slightly fey movie buff (Ava Gardner, Lana Turner and Ethel Merman are just some classic stars brought up) with a supposedly hard hitting, straight to the jugular reporter, Glick’s like an appalling baby Pat O’ Brien, Leeza Gibbons and James Lipton conjured from some sick, Cronenberg Brood-like womb. The shape of fame.
So it makes some sense that the film would place it, ever so slightly, in a Lynch-ian universe, complete with Short heavily made up like the Mulholland Drive director. But that’s where the picture falls most flat. Still, it's never completely tiresome. Every time the film shows a Lynch style slow mo of Glick feverishly stabbing a movie star it cracked me up. I don't know why.
The film takes Butte, Montana entertainment reporter Glick and family--wife Dixie (played by a hilarious Jan Hooks) and his two, big boned twin boys named Modine and Matthew (a joke that isn’t funny until Glick randomly states it was because of Modine's film Birdy) to the Toronto Film Festival where oodles of stars walk the red carpet. Jiminy’s been assigned to review the film, Growing Up Gandhi but sleeps through the screening, leading to the movie’s only good review. Because of Glick’s false enthusiasm the reporter lands the rare exclusive sit down with the director and star (Corey Pearson), an idiotic, young Hollywood pretty boy play-acting deep. Glick finds himself more in demand after his scoop but complications arise when alcoholic star Miranda Coolidge (Elizabeth Perkins—playing off how washed up she is herself) may have been stabbed to death after a boozy night with Glick. Did Glick do the deed? Only David Lynch can explain.
Yes, David Lynch who’s a bit off the radar to poke fun at but then, the fact that Short just keeps going with it makes the payoff funnier than it has any right to be. Short and Hooks (who gives one of the most un-glamorous portraits of a Midwestern wife, citing her private area as “big as a purse” after having two kids—“Remember what I said to you about that word mystique?” Glick reminds his wife) are brilliantly up on their improv game. Truly, I was dying in nearly all their scenes together. Even in their (yuck) moment of passion.
And in scenes with Steve Martin and Kurt Russell, Short’s Glick provides some priceless instances of off-the-cuff comedy, during which a pro like Martin can’t even keep up. And no one can keep a straight face. Russell says during the film's closing credits that he's certain he's not going to make it through the scene--he can't even look at Martin Short.
Jiminy Glick in LaLaWood may not be the sharpest Hollywood satire you'll see, but there is most certainly nothing else like it. Or him. Unless of course, you drop into a film junket’s grade-Z press room—you might see something like him there. Horrifyingly, that’s no joke.
"Jiminy Glick in LaLaWood" opens today, May 6.
In the 1974 Burt Reynolds’s classic The Longest Yard (directed by Robert Aldrich), disgraced pro football wash-up Paul Crewe was a laughingly bitter, cynical swagger of a man. In the film’s first five minutes—he’s angrily shoved a woman, stolen her maserati and punched two cops while yucking it up in a bar. He’s not a nice guy and yet, in Reynolds’s hands, one charming son of a bitch. In the PC Adam Sandler re-make Crewe (Sandler) is merely lost—a boy/man whose MVP disrepute leads him to drunken, reckless driving and a goofy cop car pileup a la The Dukes of Hazard. 
