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With: Charlie Day, Ken Jeong, Ray Liotta, Kate Beckinsale, Adrien Brody, Common, Jason Sudeikis, Edie Falco, John Malkovich, Jillian Bell, Dean Norris, Jason Bateman
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Written by: Charlie Day
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Directed by: Charlie Day
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MPAA Rating: R for language, some drug use and sexual content
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Running Time: 97
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Date: 05/12/2023
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Star and Feathered
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
Charlie Day digs deep into Hollywood's past for this frenetic, exhausting showbiz comedy/parody that is ultimately just as vapid as its target; it has solid laughs, but many more jokes fail to land.
In it, a man who does not speak (Day) is released from a mental health facility and placed on a bus to Hollywood. He's discovered by a producer (Ray Liotta) as a dead ringer for a troublesome Method actor (also Day) who refuses to come out of his trailer.
Meanwhile, an ineffectual publicist, Larry (Ken Jeong), discovers him and dubs him "Latte Pronto." Latte becomes a huge star in the subsequent Jesse James movie, praised for the way he looks at the camera. He befriends a famous actor (Adrien Brody), a glamorous starlet (Kate Beckinsale) marries him, and a hotshot director (Jason Sudeikis) casts him in his next movie, Mosquito Boy. But just as quickly as Latte's career took off, it starts to come unraveled.
Making his feature writing/directing debut with Fool's Paradise, Day constructs a character for himself from pieces of babyface silent-era comic Harry Langdon (The Strong Man, Long Pants, Three's a Crowd, etc.), Jerry Lewis's behind-the-scenes Hollywood comedy The Errand Boy, Peter Sellers's Chauncey Gardiner in Being There, and Joe Morton's non-speaking alien visitor in The Brother from Another Planet. Day gets it just right, and his innocent reactions to all the calamity are, if not always funny, then usually charming.
He must have called in many favors to assemble this impressive all-star cast, but unfortunately, they are all tasked to do the same thing: to go big where Day goes small. (Jeong, who probably has the most screen time of anyone other than Day, is particularly manic, as if he really were chugging can after can of the energy drinks his character likes.)
Ironically, the most stinging joke in Fool's Paradise is not movie-related at all. It happens right at the beginning when Latte is released from the hospital because there's no money for the mental health treatment he requires. Perhaps Day can tackle that issue in another movie.
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