The Ladies Man

I loved it. It was just what I needed after a hard day at work. Tim Meadows was freaky and disgusting. Heehee! He is so dang cute, I could hardly contain myself. He says some great one-liners and I laughed out loud a few times. This movie was hands down "craptacular" in my book and definitely in keeping with several other fine SNL films.

Sometimes they get lucky and have a hit on their hands (Wayne's World, the first one, not the second). But most often they have duds (It's Pat comes to mind rather quickly). This time out it's Tim Meadows as The Ladies Man. This movie falls somewhere in between a hit and a dud. It was very funny for the first 20 minutes, but then, as usually happens with SNL skits, it starts to slow down, before finally ending, long after it should have.

Tim Meadows is Leon Phelps, a radio DJ with a nightly show called The Ladies Man. He answers any and all questions dealing with sex and relationships, usually in the crudest way possible. Everything seems to ultimately come down to the butt. After pushing the buttons of the station manager, Leon, along with his producer Julie (Karyn Parsons) gets fired, and needs to find another job. Out of the random blue, comes a letter from one of his ex-ladies. The letter offers him wealth and luxury for the rest of his life, the only problem being that the letter isn't signed. So Leon needs to track down all the women he's been with to find the woman of his dreams. But sometimes, as Billy Dee Williams says in the film, the woman of your dreams is standing right in front of you. There is also a sub-plot about a bunch of guys who's wives/girlfriends have all slept with Leon, and they want to first figure out who he is (by a tattoo he has on a part of his anatomy), then kill him. Leading this bunch of guys is, surprise! Will Ferrell from SNL. First off, I thought the sub-plot was rather lame. The singing and dancing stuff was just completely worthless. I usually like Will Ferrell but here he just never clicked for me. And the rest of the guys were just schlubs who tagged along, and in the end all decided that having their wives/girlfriends cheat on them was in fact their fault. So back to the main story. The story basically centers around Leon and sex. So what it comes down to is, if you don't like the character of Leon, you won't like the movie. His voice, his mannerisms, his dialogue is what carries the movie. I am not a big fan of Tim Meadows. I never thought he was a particularly good actor on SNL. The only thing I ever really liked of his, was his Ladies Man skits. But the best thing about those, is that they usually involved the guest host (remember the one with Cameron Diaz?), and they were short. For about 5 minutes, they were pretty funny. And here, for about 20 minutes, it's really funny. What I thought was good about the character in the movie, is that he stayed in character throughout. He never wavered from his wanted to just get laid persona. Until right at the end where there was this transformation, and the ever present speech to tie things up. Other than that, it was pretty good at keeping Leon as Leon, and not changing him into something less crude than he was. There isn't a lot of substance to this movie, if you couldn't guess. But like I said earlier, the beginning of the movie I found to be very funny. Some real laugh out loud moments, all revolving around sex and his crudeness. The problem of course with this movie, and most other SNL spin offs, is that these are characters that are only supposed to be shown for a few minutes at a time. Stretching the concept into 80 minutes is very difficult. That difficulty is obviously why they needed the sub-plot, because without it, this movie would have been a little under an hour. When it was good, it was good, but when it wasn't good, it got to be boring.

So overall, The Ladies Man wasn't as bad as other SNL films, but it wasn't as good as others. It had some funny moments, the first 20 minutes was pretty good, but the rest of it dragged on. There was an unnecessary sub-plot whose only purpose was to lengthen the film. The bottom line is, if you like Tim Meadows and his Leon Phelps character, you'll be able to watch the film. If he annoys you, don't even bother going. Unless you just want to see Tiffani Theissen in some nice revealing clothing.

Another Saturday Night Live project. If you get 4 minutes into the film and decide you don't think that you like Leon Phelps you might as well stop. If you get that far and don't smirk once DEFINITELY stop, it ain't gonna change from here.

Leon Phelps is a radio talkback guy that can only exist in movies as he would never really get a job in the real world. He is a 70s throwback complete with a 1:2 scale Dr J afro and speaks with a heavy distinct lisp and a slow drawl in a wannabe erudite manner.

Leon gives ridiculously homophobic, sexist and outdated answers to the most straightforward of relationship based questions, and for some reason the callers are offended despite the fact that Leon ALWAYS gives similar, generally butt-related responses.

Leon's producer is Julie Simmons who is likable but will always be the uppity daughter from Fresh Prince to me, she must field all the complaints and queries, and simultaneously ward off the angry station managers who constantly want to fire Leon.

When one manages to do so and Leon is turfed, we get a brief explanation of how he came to be (long story short he grew up in the Playboy mansion) and then move to his dingy local bar where we get to meet the regular clientele that Leon calls friends.

As Leon and Julie plot the next stage of their career we are informed that Leon not only talks the talk but humps the walk, he apparently has a string of "special ladies" all over the city, many of whom hate his guts. This has lead to a similar number of disgruntled husbands and partners who know Leon only from the smiley face tattoo on his derriere. I will not refer to this group again in favourable terms, suffice to say they include Will Ferrell and Lee Evans, two of the worst and over-hyped comedic actors in recent history.

They wish Leon harm.

Leon has no job, no prospects and no regular missus. On top of this Julie has had enough of his lack of common sense and has temporarily scarpered. After delivering one of the better lines in any comedy film for two decades; "There is nothing left to do. I'm going to have sex and wait for something to randomly happen." … something happens. Leon gets an unsigned letter where the female writer offers to share her life – and millions with Leon. He sets about finding his soul mate, leading to one of those montages Schneider specialises in where every meeting is apparently hilarious even though most of them aren't.

Another case of the wrong guy chasing after the wrong lady even when everyone knows that the chick he is ignoring is Miss Right, don't they do this in rom-coms about 75 times a year? That thought is also put on its head when he finally finds the chick and it is Tiffany-Amber Thiessen in her prime. In lingerie. Damnnnn, HELLO MISS WRONG!!! The finale is cheesy and a little disappointing… (Ferrell & Evens feature), but mostly The Ladies Man is the story of a man out of touch with the real world, a man who lives in his own bubble of ignorance but is always totally honest and true to himself and what he believes in. Even if that is stupid.

Take out the wronged guys subplot and this movie is even better, but also about 40 minutes long, maybe this is a case of better left as a skit? Final Rating – 7.5 / 10. Annoying sub-plots and cheesy finales aside, this is funny stuff in the main. I do like Leon Phelps.

I'm probably one of the few who thought this movie was hilarious. I mean, how can you NOT laugh at Will Ferrell and Lee Evans breaking into a song about how they're going to beat up the title character ("the bastard's going to pay!") The movie gets funnier and stranger in the second hour, when anything resembling a plot was apparently tossed out the window. Leon Phelps is a unique Saturday Night Live creation. If you don't expect much (as I did going in), you may just find yourself in stitches. Granted, this is not the stuff of classic comedy, but it's not the "one star" comedy that most critics called it.

This gets a seven from me because it reminds me so perfectly of this era in which it was created and released into theaters and eventually on to dvd.

My friends and I used to imitate The Ladies Man from his skits on SNL.

Really just one skit where he said one thing.

But we said that line all the time.

An old guy called into his show one time on tv and said that the little blue pill had extremely intensified his old wife and his intimate relationship.

And The Ladies Man asked how old they were, and I can't remember what the caller said, but it was pretty old and The Ladies Man simply replied, Yeah, well that's dusgustin..." And that's the line we used to say all the time and we would say it just like him.

But I've never seen his movie until now.

I didn't hate it.

I liked it.

Since comedies in movies don't really exist anymore, I enjoyed this quite a bit.

It's silly. Lots of good cameos. It's short and that's always good.

It's a typical more modern day SNL film but heck, even this is twenty five years old now!

Omg!!

But because the schtick is of an outdated character (the 70's) it still actually works.

You'll get a good laugh.

Get out the cognac. And enjoy.

It's not disgustin...