Nathan Rabin has figured out why the world has sucked so much since 2000: it’s been that long since there was a feature film based on a Saturday Night Live character. That means that the last person to bring an SNL character to the big screen was Tim Meadows, as smooth-talking radio host Leon Phelps in The Ladies Man (not to be confused with the Jerry Lewis movie of the same name). Since then… nothing. Not even the Italian talk-show host.
Nathan Rabin has figured out why the world has sucked so much since 2000: it’s been that long since there was a feature film based on a Saturday Night Live character. That means that the last person to bring an SNL character to the big screen was Tim Meadows, as smooth-talking radio host Leon Phelps in The Ladies Man (not to be confused with the Jerry Lewis movie of the same name). Since then… nothing. Not even the Italian talk-show host.
Thanks to Lorne, Andy Samberg did get to make a movie that was basically exactly like an SNL spinoff movie (including that thing where they have a few funny parts surrounded by immense quantities of filler), but didn’t actually use characters from the show. Baby Mama, same deal; Lorne produced it, and it felt like an SNL skit blown up to 90 minutes, but it was not actually based on an SNL sketch. Lorne really does seem to have lost his passion for turning five-minute sketches into 90-minute movies, but it does seem like a failure of nerve that he hasn’t yet made Oh, No! Guy — The Movie.