The Prize Fighter

Tim Conway was very funny on "The Carol Burnett Show", but outside of that show he came across as being very lame. Not just with his "Dorf" videos, but also with his motion pictures. My theory is that he had too much creative control when he was in movies, since often he also took on the role of the screenwriter, this movie being one just example. I had a little hope that there might be some laughs, seeing that Conway's co-star was the great Don Knotts. But Knotts' performance here is very subdued; it's clear that he knows he's in a real turkey. The main problems with the movie are that the script is simply not that funny, and that director Michael Preece seems unable to inject any serious energy to what unfolds on the screen. What results is gag after gag landing with a thud, made worse by a story that is obviously very padded out. Though the movie only runs about 98 minutes long, it feels a lot longer, so much so that it's sometimes agonizing to sit through . It doesn't help that the official DVD release of the movie more often than not has a transfer that resembles a rip of a VHS copy. Hard to believe that this movie did reasonably good business for an independently made production.