The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave

Year 6, Day 188 - 7/7/14 - Movie #1,784

BEFORE:  Forgive me for putting the two films about stuntmen on my list back-to-back.  Some films are bricks, some are intended as mortar.  I've got two weeks laid out that constitutes a path back to superhero films, and the path goes right through this one.  Linking from "The Stunt Man", Barbara Hershey was in a film called "Tune In Tomorrow" with Dan Hedaya (last seen in "Dick").

THE PLOT:  Super Dave Osborne, accident-prone stuntman hero, comes out of a self-imposed retirement to raise money for his new girlfriend's son's heart operation.

AFTER: Yeah, this was a pretty crappy movie, and I knew going in it was going to be a crappy movie, but it's a movie that's in the collection already, and the goal has always been to see everything in the collection, adding films as I go.  I can't in good conscience call the project over until everything has been watched, as painful as that may be sometimes.

For those too young to remember, Super Dave was a recurring character on TV in the 1970's and 80's, appearing in similar segments on shows like "The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour" and John Byner's Canadian import "Bizarre", before getting his own Showtime show in the late 80's.  These would usually involve the announcement of some bizarre daredevil stunt, followed by an interview segment about said stunt, during which the stunt would occur prematurely, or otherwise fail horribly, leaving the stuntman crushed in an impossibly small heap, or otherwise horribly disfigured, in the name of low comedy.

Each segment was designed to be no more than a few minutes long, so you can probably guess what happens if you string 30 or 40 of these gags together to make a 90-minute movie - it's really just the same joke over and over, repeat as necessary until you reach the end credits.  Super Dave gets injured, recovers somehow, and for some silly reason does not fire the people who planned the last stunt, and trusts them again and again to get things right, which they don't.

What's even worse than repetition, though, is the fact that this film can't seem to settle on a main plot, and changes its focus 2 or 3 times along the way.  Super Dave retires, only he doesn't - he falls in love, only that also goes horribly wrong - he trains a protege, who steals his act, setting up a pointless confrontation.  When you sit down to write a screenplay for a character, it's good to give the character goals, but it's also good to try to not do everything at once. 

I think there's a place for movies made about TV sketch characters - "Strange Brew", "Wayne's World", "Beavis and Butthead Do America" and so on - only those films gave their characters more to do, and this one's just the same old stuff.  Some of the stuff that pokes fun at Evel Knievel <> works, if you think that sort of thing is ripe for parody, but other stuff, like the subplot about collecting mimes, just goes absolutely nowhere. 

Also starring Bob Einstein, Don Lake (last seen in "Wagons East"), Gia Carides, Art Irizawa, with cameos from Ray Charles, Michael Buffer (last seen in "The Fighter"), Evander Holyfield, John Elway, Mike Connors and Billy Barty.

RATING: 2 out of 10 dirt bikes