Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

This sleek and sunny comedy is an all-too-rare example of smart and inventive Hollywood filmmaking.

San Francisco Chronicle Peter Hartlaub

The rare David Spade movie that won't make you hate yourself in the morning.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Manages to fascinate more than it entertains.

Variety Joe Leydon

Offers a largely satisfying mix of broad slapstick, seriocomic sentimentality and mostly amusing satirical thrusts at easy targets.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Imparts its fair share of laughs but bogs down after a solid start and never makes anything special out of its premise.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

There are laughs, to be sure, and some gleeful supporting performances, but after a promising start the movie sinks in a bog of sentiment.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

The movie's ridiculous good humor -- laced with just enough barbs to keep it from going soft -- suggest that it's been made with some thought and care. I often found myself laughing in spite of no one, not even myself.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Sharp satire or feel-good foolishness? Silly sap won out.

Wall Street Journal Joanne Kaufman

Squanders endless opportunities for sharp satire, keeping to a steady course of tame, toothless comedy, and wrapping things up with the kind of vapid ending "The Brady Bunch" would be proud to call its own.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

After a smart start, it sinks into sentimental goo that traps even the aggressively snarky Spade.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

The majority of Dickie Roberts winds up looking like a tame episode of the "Brady Bunch" -- spiked with Spade-esque crudity.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

The number of levels on which these pros trade on their diminished reputations makes the movie an inside joke rather than a funny one. If Spade thinks otherwise, he's nucking futs.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

The movie has been made with consummate carelessness but with occasional moments of knowing humor.

TV Guide Angel Cohn

The unique musical ending is worth the wait.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The film is intermittently funny and strangely intermittent.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Spade goes sweet and gooey. This is nucking futs.

The Hollywood Reporter Sheri Linden

Generally succeeds -- in hit-and-miss fashion -- at bridging the gap between unlikable jerk and misunderstood good guy, though it's still something of a leap to leading-man territory.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

Maintaining a winking distance from his comic persona, Mr. Spade radiates a cunning show-business cynicism that lets you know he's aware that he's slumming to make a buck.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Spade claims he latched onto his snide persona to distinguish himself from the pack; it's served him well as an ensemble player and a big-screen foil to Chris Farley, but as a romantic lead he's hopeless.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Isn't so much a movie as a 90-minute Trivial Pursuit contest to name bit players from TV's distant past.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

The best thing about star and co-writer David Spade's Dickie Roberts, Former Child Star is the end-title sequence, a big, sassy sing-along in which dozens of old TV child stars spew out defiant jokes about their old careers and fame's fickle fingers.

Miami Herald Charles Savage

Whether his character is happy, sad, angry or scared, Spade affects precisely the same knowing smirk and sarcastic delivery. This one-note style makes him a funny stand-up comedian. But in a role, it's usually pure amateur hour.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Spade can still be funny when he lets himself be mean, and Dickie Roberts shows glimmers of that dynamic, but they're muscled out by lazy slapstick and maudlin stuff.

LA Weekly John Dentino

Occasionally funny, cameo-speckled marshmallow.

Village Voice Alex Pappademas

Obtuse and creepy.

Slate David Edelstein

It underscores the gruesome legacy of Saturday Night Live in American movies...They haven't liberated screen comedy, they've left it neutered--or, should I say, Spade.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

There's a funny movie struggling inside of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. Too bad it never gets out.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Four chuckles and a lively final-credits sequence are a mighty poor score for 99 minutes of alleged comedy, and the sentimental stuff is even worse.

Dallas Observer Robert Wilonsky

When the movie's not playing stupid, it's aiming for sickly sweet sincerity. It's such a jarring and inevitably juvenile juxtaposition it comes off like a Hallmark card parody written by the staffers at "Cracked."

Washington Post Desson Thomson

This David Spade comedy breaks an ankle, ruptures several knee ligaments and hits the dirt harder than a felled linebacker. Best thing you can do for this movie? Leave it writhing in the throes of forced humor.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

The best bit, however, is not even in the movie, but in the film’s end credits: an expletive-filled parody of We Are the World in which a host of has-beens croon about their halcyon days as child stars.