Call Off the Search Party: Steve Martin

There are some actors who you simply can't watch, unless a misplaced sense of Catholic guilt requires you to do penance by sticking the metaphorical equivalent of a poniard into your eyeballs. Case in point? David Caruso. His heavy-handed, over-modulated, Ray-Ban driven delivery (and seriously, has any other actor relied so heavily on a pair of shades to fake gravitas more than this hack?) always makes me reach for the remote.

And then there is Steve Martin. Steve Martin too makes me want to reach for the remote, but in a different way. It's just too painful to watch the comedic genius who brought us so much joy with movies like "The Jerk", "All of Me", and "Roxanne" sully his reputation with sterile, soulless fare such as the sequels to "Father of the Bride" and "Cheaper by the Dozen", both of which enjoy maddeningly constant airtime on our cable movie channels. How could the author of "Shopgirl" stoop so low? Perhaps he suffers from De-Niro-itis, where, having established himself as one of the most gifted talents ever to grace the silver screen, he feels that it's okay to never say no. Even if it means having to do The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Which is why, in the greater scheme of things, it was great to read the following excerpt from noted New Yorker critic Anthony Lane's review of "Baby Mama":

If you want to see scene-stealing turned into grand larceny, watch Sigourney Weaver, as the owner of the surrogacy service, or, better still, Steve Martin, as the presiding genius of Round Earth. Hand the guy a thick hank of ponytail, relieve him of the burden of a central role, aim him squarely at the bull’s-eye of eco-smugness (“I’ve toasted pine nuts on the edge of an active volcano”), and you find him happier onscreen than I have seen him in years. Who cares whose baby is inside which mother, when the laughs come from the grown man doing business with his inner child?

It's not exactly the Steve Martin vehicle that I want to see, but it's nice to hear that doing all those hack jobs hasn't blunted his skills too much. Now, if only we can stop him from doing the sequel to "The Pink Panther"...

Photo Credits:
Picture of Steve Martin and Tina Fey comes courtesy of About.com: Hollywood Movies.