Film Review: 'Corky Romano' has few redeeming laughs

hris Kattan doing an improvisation to Britney Spears’ “”Oops … I did it Again”” as an audition to perform with the wannabe diva herself: hilarious. Chris Kattan pestering a member of *NSync at the Teen Choice Awards: a good laugh. Chris Kattan as a veterinarian assistant turned FBI special agent for his new film “”Corky Romano””: ehhh.

In his solo film debut, Kattan is the overzealous Corky Romano, whose life revolves around his snazzy yellow Miata and patching up canaries. That is, until he’s called out of the vet business to infiltrate the FBI in order to retrieve incriminating evidence against his father, mafioso “”Pops”” Romano. Soon after Corky joins the brotherhood, the plot becomes as spastic as Kattan himself. Assigned to a special task force in search of serial killer “”Night Vulture,”” who has a flair for cracking nuts, Corky becomes caught between family and FBI loyalty — an interesting dilemma. As the search for the villainous “”Night Vulture”” continues and the swipe-card to the evidence room gives Kattan trouble, we begin to wonder if we should even care.

The fundamental problem of “”Corky Romano”” is that it’s too much at once. It seems as though Kattan knew he had more than two minutes to exercise our funny bones, so he decided to hit us with everything in the comedic book, from the cheesy love story to giving CPR to a dog to straining to pass gas just for the fart gag. And in case that wasn’t enough, we also get a car chase, a fight with a vertically challenged bouncer a la “”Matrix”” and a shocking experience with some neo-Nazi heroin addicts, all of which give Kattan an opportunity to talk to his crotch (don’t ask).

But please, Kattan is no Jim Carrey. Instead of at least adopting a slicing verbal wit, he relies on a flashy smile. Great, so he’s a nice guy. Yet regardless of any good intentions, his constant pastel-shaded aura and his ability to turn the FBI into the “”groovy tie squad”” is just irritating.

However, Kattan redeems himself in a sequence involving a bag of cocaine, a police dog and a room of wide-eyed school kids. Yet for the rest of the movie, we have to be content with spotting the original Shaft (Richard Roundtree), who seems to have gone institutionally legit as the FBI director. Vincent Pastore, better known as Big Pussy on HBO’s hit series “”The Sopranos,”” provides us with the only true Mafia moment as Corky’s replacement in the vet clinic.

All in all, “”Corky Romano”” is probably only worth the time it’ll take to download it off the Internet.

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