Movie Info
Movie Name: The Ladies Man
Studio: SNL Studios
Genre(s): Comedy
Release Date(s): October 13, 2000
MPAA Rating: R
Hey, ladies…the Ladies Man is here! (Unfortunately)
Leon Phelps (Tim Meadows) has a top-rated and loved radio show…in his own mind. In reality, he gets piles and piles of letters of complaints due to his romantic advice. When Leon and his producer Julie Simmons (Karyn Parsons) are fired, the race is on to find another station to carry Leon’s show. Unfortunately, a group of cluckolded men is also pursuing Leon led by Lance DeLune (Will Ferrell) who is bent on destroying the Ladies Man once and for all!
Directed by Reginald Hudlin, The Ladies Man is a comedy adaptation of the Saturday Night Live skit. The movie was released to extreme criticism and poor box office returns.
It’s alright, ’cause I’m saved by the bell!
I never liked the Ladies Man on SNL. Tim Meadows’ character first appeared on October 4, 1997 and kept coming back…and back…and back. Each sketch was the same and less and less funny. When they announced a whole movie about the character, it was destine to fail.
The story for the movie is all over the place. It is obviously a love story in the big picture with Leon finding his way to Julie, but the love story is conflicted by the poor attempts at comedy. The search for a new radio station, a random bar food eating competition, the quest for a sugar-momma, and the “Anti-Ladies Man” organization all bog down a movie that already isn’t funny.
What can I use these clippers on?
Tim Meadows was one of SNL’s less funny cast mates but he has had moments of greatness…The Ladies Man isn’t one of them. Karyn Parsons is charming as his producer who believes in him but often is forgotten in the story. The movie has a few appearances by bigger stars in small roles like Will Ferrell, Tiffani Thiessen, Eugene Levy, and Julianne Moore, but I can give the movie props for having the ladies’ man himself Billy Dee Williams providing a slick narration.
SNL movies usually look cheap, and The Ladies Man follows suit. SNL was pumping out movies left and right at the time and it doesn’t look like they put much effort into the production of this film. The Ladies Man was mean to be a low cost high return movie…it wasn’t.
The Ladies Man really isn’t worth watching. It is dull, lifeless, and not funny. The movie did kill the SNL movie trend. The poor reception of the movie trumped the other poor receptions and SNL did not make another film until MacGruber in 2010…at least it wasn’t The Ladies Man 2.
