From the Friday, March 28 Oregonian....
Thanks almost entirely to star Simon Pegg, "Run Fatboy Run" succeeds as a mildly entertaining comedy about yet another 30-year-old boy who decides to get his act together for an out-of-his-league woman.
In fact, in some ways "Fatboy" makes me admire Pegg as an actor ("Hot Fuzz," "Shaun of the Dead") even more than I already did -- because Pegg made me care about his character, Dennis, despite the following:
- In the film's first three minutes, Dennis leaves his sweet, beautiful fiancé Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar. He literally runs screaming and sweating away from the ceremony in a tux. Libby, it is worth noting, is pregnant with his child.
- Dennis later offers this excuse for that unforgivable offense: "I thought spoiling your day was better than ruining your life!" Seems to me he kind of did ruin her life with the whole single-mother surprise, but okay....
- Five years later, Dennis is a paunchy, flaky, chain-smoking security guard who lives alone in a basement apartment, mooches off his friends and wraps himself in a nice warm blanket of failure while cursing (and getting arrested) in front of his son. He refers to himself as "nearly-man." But then Libby falls for an investment banker named Whit (Hank Azaria) who runs marathons. And Dennis gets it in his head that he can prove to Libby that he can finish something in life by running a marathon of his own. In three weeks.
I ran a marathon once. Training for it in three weeks from nothing is impossible, and while finishing one certainly stretches your mental toughness, it doesn't redeem any of your sins. But hey -- it's the movies.
"Run Fatboy Run" is directed in a calm, clear, workmanlike fashion by "Friends" star David Schwimmer, and like a laugh-track sitcom, it tells a story full of stacked decks. The deck is stacked against the new love interest by making him a smarmy guy named "Whit." The deck is stacked in favor of Dennis (despite all of the above) by letting Pegg get laughs as a loveable-loser Everyman; by giving him a rapport with a cute kid; by making his gorgeous ex a blank who mostly reacts to him; and by surrounding him with wacky British comic-relief pals right out of a Richard Curtis rom-com.
The humor tends toward mild crass-middlebrow -- bare buttocks and inappropriate scratching are Schwimmer's go-to comedy staples -- and the story is ridiculous and way too on-the-nose. (Like, to the degree that characters are literally framed standing under finish-line signs as rewards for other characters.) But Pegg (who co-wrote the script) plays to his strengths. You can't help but root for the loser.
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C-plus; 100 minutes; rated PG-13 for some rude and sexual behavior, nudity, language and smoking.
'Run Fatboy Run' (The Oregonian, March 28, 2008)
Right on ... hard to imagine how intolerable this would have been without Simon Pegg as its star.
Posted by: Christian Toto | March 31, 2008 at 06:54 PM