Laugh, viewer, laugh! (Run Ronnie Run (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Run Ronnie Run (DVD)
Date:	10/04/07 (157 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stupid, funny, great main character you'll hate to love!

Disadvantages: stupid, a main character you'll hate yourself for liking

Run Ronnie Run is an odd little comedy gem, it is very reminiscent of the channel 4 sitcom ‘My Name Is Earl’, at least the main characters in Earl remind me a lot of Ronnie and his friends. They could very easily fit into the Earl ‘world’ and not look out of place. It fits in with the 'stupid' comedy of Zoolander and Will Ferrell just perfectly.

The star of Run Ronnie Run (RRR) is one Ronnie Dobbs, a mullet haired idiot who is pretty close to being stereotypical trailer park trash. He drinks all day long and with his best friend Clay (David Koechner – Snakes On A Plane) gets into all sorts of trouble with the local Police.

One night the TV show ‘Fuzz’ (basically ‘Cops’ that US follow the Police documentary like series) is in his town and films the local Police chasing Ronnie through a trailer park. His excuses once caught are hilarious and when he is again arrested on camera later on, once again in stupid circumstances and with hilarious excuses for his activities, a failed TV producer trying to come up with a career saving show suddenly finds inspiration.
See Ronnie is that rare find, he is a man everybody loves, or at least can laugh at, and would be the perfect reality TV star. You would just have to tune in next week to find out what this idiot would get up to next!

So from the fertile mind of the producer comes ‘Ronnie Dobbs Gets Arrested’ a reality show where cameras follow Ronnie around as he visits various different cities all across the states of America and manages to get himself arrested for some stupid, drunken reason in every single one!

How will this sudden fame impact on Ronnie and his friends? How will life in Hollywood change the trash talking southerner?

Run Ronnie Run is the creation of David Cross & Bob Odenkirk, famed in America for their sitcom ‘Mr. Show, highly regarded on that side of the Atlantic but never shown here, as far as I know. It looks and reads like low humour comedy, which in many ways it is, but it is also very clever and makes some very sly little digs, and so very obvious ones, at the way American TV is heading, (and British TV these days as well). Its love of reality shows over quality drama and comedy is spoofed not only by Ronnie’s show but by one called ‘elimination’, an extreme version of Survivor.

Run Ronnie Run is not high quality comedy, it isn’t really subtle or clever most of the time but it does manage to stay just above the likes of Something Like Mary and avoids the lowest common denominator… just!
The script is sharp and the dialogue so true to life, well okay true to what we think American trailer trash would be like maybe. In fact David Cross has managed to encapsulate all we think of Southern American trailer trash in one character... the eponymous Ronnie!
He really is everything you hate in a petty criminal but he is also a man who, in his own strange way, cares for his friends and family. Somehow he is a character you soon warm to and get to like, much like the viewers to his show do, and you really do want him to change his life around, even if you do not believe he will ever succeed in doing that.

Run Ronnie Run is packed full of cameos and guest appearances which again goes to show the standing in the comic world that Cross and Odenkirk have. Amongst those appearing are Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Rebecca Romjin-Stamos and our own David Baddiel.
Having said that the genius of casting comes from getting in two old mainstay character actors… R. L Ermey, playing the same kind of part he always has done ever since first appearing in Platoon and M.C Gaines as the local sheriff who wants rid of Ronnie. These two are always a pleasure to watch and they add that aura of respectability to the crazed comedy going on all around them.

I picked this DVD up from a cheap, cheap shop in Milton Keynes having heard stories about it for a couple of years and it was well worth the £3 I paid for it. Search it out, go on I dare you, even though there are no extras at all on my disc, it may just be worth it!

Summary: A trailer trash drunkard gets his own reality show