Meet The Deedles

Walt Disney spent over thirty years turning the Disney name into the gold standard for family entertainment; it has taken only several months for Disney's current bosses to turn that name into an indicator of something considerably more base. The annual animated feature aside, Uncle Walt's factory has taken to churning out live-action features which stink like the flatulence they so often feature: 101 Dalmatians, Rocket Man, Mr. Magoo, Krippendorf's Tribe and now Meet the Deedles, the story of a pair of ne'er-do-well teenage brothers (Paul Walker and Steve Van Wormer) tearing up Yellowstone National Park. Predictably, a bunch of tenuously connected action-slapstick sequences ensue. Even more predictably, those action-slapstick sequences include jokes entirely inappropriate for the target audience. At best, we're talking about taking the toilet humor in the creative direction of incontinent pigeons bombarding the chief ranger; at worst, we're talking about the omnipresent smack-in-the-groin shot. There's nothing inherently wrong with low humor, but films like Meet the Deedles trot out scatological gags with a weary inevitability, as though it wouldn't really be a kids' film unless someone let one rip. Combine the unpleasant content with Dennis Hopper's irony-free performance as the villain and the ersatz Bill and Ted slang-spewing of our charmless protagonists, and you have one heck of a long sit. Meet the Deedles didn't have to be smart. There's a place for dopey-but-innocuous family fare. The key word there would be "innocuous." If Disney execs are interested in salvaging what remains of the studio's reputation--and its dignity--they might stop for a moment to think about what Uncle Walt might say after he picked his jaw up off the floor and stopped slapping the responsible parties insensible. (S. Renshaw)