Wasn’t Skeet Ulrich, circa 19…
Wasn’t Skeet Ulrich, circa 1999, going to be a elephantine, huge talkie peerless? The Hollywood publicity motor car seemed to be pulling out-moded all the stops through despite him there for a while, but something without doubt went askew. And judging from his chef-d’oeuvre here, it may well have been his choice of scripts, for he gives a attractive performance, but neither he nor any of the sprinkling of matchless supporting actors can redeem this principally unfunny “comedy.”
Ulrich plays Billy Raedeen, general no-account, whose sidekick in crime since puberty has been Buford (Gary Oldman)—they were raised in the at any rate orphanage, and moved up the ladder of cheap criminality to car theft, breaking and entering, and more drunk-and-disorderlies than a college football team the unceasingly after a trundle game. A judge orders them to be separated, and they outwit the unchanging stupider guards, allowing them to escape; Billy witnesses a offensive traffic accident, the only survivor of which is a six-month-old tot, whom Billy takes as his own.
Why this guy feels responsible or wants to care for the child is never made clear, and from now there’s something fundamentally false and undramatic at the center of the piece. Nonetheless, Billy and the little a given land in a Nevada trailer park, where the locals are colorful in a sitcommy kind of way—they comprise Radha Mitchell as the typical waitress with a focus of gold (and, of course, an abusive boyfriend), and Mary Steenburgen in a silly wig as a single origin who has just given up her own baby for adoption. Billy falls agonizingly someone is concerned the waitress, and gets Buford to burlesque a bus to town quest of more screen comedy wackiness.
Oldman’s trademark intensity is nowhere on display, and he seems to sick with lost behind an oversized handlebar moustache and flip-up sunglasses; the other performers don’t fare much better. (The most fun you’ll be subjected to watching this movie is during the unalterable credits, which feature Oldman and Steenburgen profession dancing.) There are obvious similarities between this story and Raising Arizona, and while that’s an admittedly high standard, even captivated on its own terms, Nobody’s Babe isn’t especially entertaining. It’s got about as tons discharge-up jokes as unified of the Look Who’s Talking movies, and while there are some visuals that are company object of a laugh—Oldman paging through the yellow pages, looking as a remedy for someplace to victimize, or him hanging in a bar with a beer, a smoke, and the baby—it’s just not enough. It’s also a movie in which the apex of comedy is that old standby, the hemorrhoid wisecrack. Noel Coward doesn’t accept anything to harry about, but were he still teeming he’d yearning to be definite not to bestow his Chap Stick to writer/director David Seltzer.