As a culture, we are predisposed to enjoying some of the less intellectual sides of society, which mainly manifests in the form of the entertainment we consume. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone, but I’d argue we all have our self-professed “guilty pleasures” that we tend to keep concealed from prying eyes. The most common form is usually television, with tabloid programming only rising in popularity as time has progressed and more people have been given platforms. No longer restricted to the four networks that dominated in its earlier eras, American television has undergone quite a shift – and speaking about it from the perspective of someone a quarter of the way through the 21st century means that we are standing at the threshold of the medium having even more power. However, the discussion deviates to a slightly earlier point, taking us to the late 1990s and coming in the form of Meet Wally Sparks, a film directed by Peter Baldwin and based on a screenplay by Harry Basil and Rodney Dangerfield, which tells the story of the most hated man on television, the titular figure who hosts his own tabloid talk show which repulses even the most morally corrupt of his peers, who view him as someone who will do absolutely anything for ratings – but when he crosses the boundaries of good taste one too many times, he is confronted with the threat of having his show cancelled if he doesn’t get his act together. He and his producers come up with an ingenious plan in response – they will court a notoriously strict and conservative Southern politician to appear on his show, under the belief that if the network sees that Wally’s show can attract someone whose entire brand is built on family values and decency, then it will convince them to give him another chance. However, neither Wally nor his team is prepared for the challenges that stand ahead, especially when it comes to dealing with the pernickety governor, who shows very little interest in fraternizing with someone of such wildly divergent views. A good concept weighed down by sloppy execution, Meet Wally Sparks squanders its potential and ultimately becomes a jumble of ideas, despite having several very strong ideas embedded within.

It is a universal theme, but the foundation of Meet Wally Sparks is based on what the filmmakers view as a genuinely American phenomenon, at least in its origins. They perceive the American people to be divided into two broad groups – those who have an unhealthy obsession with television and its many options with programming, and those who entirely dismiss it as a medium, whether artistically or philosophically. The film intends to explore these ideas, not only in how different people vary in their relationship with television but also in what happens when the two groups overlap and are forced into the same general area, which is certain to yield fascinating results. Undeniably, has some terrific ideas, and it was designed to touch on what was still a raw nerve in terms of cultural commentary at the time – and even by contemporary standards, the raw themes of the film are quite daring and provocative. The relationship between the general public and the media is a fascinating one since it is usually built on an imbalance of power, and we can even bring up discussions of propaganda and the way television is a means to control the population, even if this may be over-extending the conversation ever so slightly beyond where Baldwin and his cohorts intended it to go in this specific instance. This is a clear case of a film having a strong concept that could have flourished into something fascinating but falters when it comes to putting these ideas into practice. The 1990s were filled with television satires (and it doesn’t help that it is positioned in between The Cable Guy and The Truman Show in terms of when it was released, as both are perhaps the greatest satires of television produced at the time), and Meet Wally Sparks was aspiring to follow in the footsteps of similar films, just with increasingly diminishing returns, as we see throughout the film as it fails to say anything valuable or worthwhile.

Rodney Dangerfield was both a man ahead of his time and a product of it – his brand of eccentric, irreverent middle-aged schlub has its roots in vaudeville and the early days of television, but yet still feels so profoundly modern. He’s one of those actors and writers who bridged the gap between generations of comedians, being as relevant when he debuted in the 1950s as he was towards the end of his career – and once he transitioned from Jack Roy to the persona of Dangerfield, which he played for decades and refined over time, he had struck something special, and many films were wildly successful through employing the tactic of dropping him into a story and just setting him loose, which was almost always a recipe for success. Meet Wally Sparks is one of the rare instances where it just doesn’t work, and his performance is quite weak, which is surprising considering how easy this role could have been for him, particularly since it was well within his wheelhouse as an actor. The film commits one cardinal sin: it gives Dangerfield some respect when his entire persona is based on never getting it. Wally Sparks gets away with far too much, and the film simply doesn’t know how to handle situations where Dangerfield’s character is not only liked by others in the scenes but actively embraced. There is very little tension, and the road to his success is too smooth. Instead, it was David Ogden Stiers (one of our great character actors who deserved much more recognition throughout his life) who was his patsy and the victim of the mischief, which ultimately means that he had the more interesting character since no one wants to see Dangerfield play someone who is constantly victorious at the end of every challenge he encounters, while the lead himself is mostly forgettable. There’s a reason why even the most steadfast Dangerfield aficionados look down on Meet Wally Sparks, since it just is not the showcase for the brilliant comedian that it promised to be, and ultimately feels quite weak and limited.

The fact that Dangerfield is just not firing on all cylinders is one of many flaws in this film, but far from the only problem – had it only been a matter of his performance not being up to scratch, the rest of the film is solid, it’s not likely that Meet Wally Sparks would be seen as one of his most significant failures. The truth is that there are elements of this film that are somehow even worse than his performance (which is comparatively decent, just not as good as it could have been) and that the shortcomings are mostly attributed to the screenplay and how its ideas are manifested. In the simplest terms, this film is simply not all that funny – the idea of a television host being so vulgar and lowbrow that even Jerry Springer and Sally Jessy Raphael find him disgusting is already setting us up for something that will test our patience through just being an endless stream of gross-out jokes and opportunities to be repulsive, and it’s not surprising that a lot of this occurs around Dangerfield, rather than involving him – even he had his limit as an old-fashioned showman, and characters such as those played by Debi Mazar and Michael Weatherly bore the brunt of the more morally questionable content. The film also just doesn’t work in terms of the over-arching narrative – the themes are weak at the best of times, and while the concept is promising, it falls off the rails from the start, never really gaining any momentum, especially since it is just a few extended setpieces sewn together by a thin, unconvincing narrative. It isn’t even interesting enough to be offensive, even though it openly makes it seem like it wants to be some bawdy, off-the-wall spectacle of bad taste. To have had such an impact, the film would have needed to have a clear message, which it most certainly does not have in any conceivable way, being nothing more than a jumble of poor decisions made by a team that didn’t put in even half the effort required for such a film to be effective.

It’s difficult to not find some value in Meet Wally Sparks, at least in terms of the story – undeniably, the concept of Dangerfield playing a disgraced tabloid talk show host who is on the precipice of having his career ended would be brilliant in the hands of a filmmaker like John Waters or Todd Solondz, people who implicitly understood the nuances of society and that good satire touches on more themes than it suggests at the outset. This film is ultimately quite a dour effort, never really being all that entertaining, and not even Dangerfield and his trademark wisecracks can salvage the film from being anything but a bland, uninteresting effort in which nothing is really achieved and the entire concept just becomes on an overlong jumble of ideas that speak to a non-existent audience. There’s very little value in this film outside of its concept, which required a stronger approach and sharper writing, especially since the concept was certainly relevant. There is a reason why this film has mostly faded into obscurity and just become a footnote in the otherwise fascinating career of its star, who certainly was not served well by this film in any way. Boring, uncompelling and frankly offensive in how it perpetually goes for the low-hanging fruit, Meet Wally Sparks is barely worth the time it takes to get through a mostly rough ordeal, never earning any of our respect, which is ironic considering this is perhaps the one time Dangerfield’s character manages to sample this elusive concept.