The cheeky, low-budget satire FORMER CHILD STAR takes its premise from the archetypal tabloid story of a has-been Hollywood child actor in chronic trouble with the law.
Kimmy Archer (Dianna Damir) was the adored star of "Cubby's World," a TV show about a tot and her talking cat. But that was in the 1970s, and now Kimmy is grown up, washed up, and working in a succession of burger joints. When a crusading insurance agent (writer/director Joal Ryan in cameo)
exposes Kimmy as a potential child-star time bomb waiting to go off, the boss summarily fires her. Given a gun by a friendly postman, Kimmy decides to go with the flow and commit robbery. Fortunately her hostage is David Miller (Eric Pedersen), an understanding teacher with a secret crush on
Cubby/Kimmy. He tries to straighten out Kimmy's life, taking her into his home and enrolling her in a therapy group made up exclusively of insanely neurotic former child stars. Kimmy's budding romance with David ends when he accidentally calls her "Cubby" during lovemaking. The Freudian slip
repulses Kimmy into the arms of someone she thinks understands her better: Dickie Pallasch (Michael Waite), another former child star, but with a truly maniacal streak and a vision of himself and Kimmy as natural-born-former-child-star-killers on an outlaw rampage. Kimmy doesn't share this notion
of destiny, so Dickie takes her hostage during a therapy-group performance of Oedipus Rex. Dickie's siege ends thanks to the sudden entrance of Marmoset Man (Steve Ryfle), a defunct TV superhero perpetually trying to crash the sessions. Kimmy feels ready to face the real world independent of David
or Dickie.
"Embrace adulthood" is the message of FORMER CHILD STAR, such as it is. Unfolding competently despite cheap production values (we never do get to see "Cubby's World" and the younger version of Kimmy), the feature is pretty much a knowing Hollywood skit that filmmaker Ryan stretches as far as it
can go. Funny moments include the writer/director herself hawking a cautionary pamphlet entitled "So You've Hired a Former Child Star" and keeping track of at-large has-beens on a wall map of LA. Of the largely obscure cast, Dianna Damir is winsome as the luckless heroine. This was her debut--one
could think of a few former child starlets who would have, well, killed for a comeback even on this small scale. Afterwards, real-life former child star Rodney Allen Rippy (who enjoyed a crime-free maturity) is interviewed for his opinion on the movie. He seems more bemused than amused. Indeed,
while Ryan's sitcom-like approach to the material is apt enough, this is overall a good-natured goof in which the sight of a pistol brandished onscreen comes with awareness that the weapon will never really be fired, and certainly won't hurt anybody. One yearns for the (slightly) edgier tone of
the early "National Lampoon" features. Ryan, a then-29-year-old writer/performer for a Los Angeles cable-TV comedy troupe, undertook distribution of FORMER CHILD STAR herself, showing it at a variety of film festivals, comedy clubs, and coffeehouses. Meanwhile the glossy romantic comedy 'TIL THERE
WAS YOU (1997), with a lot more money, did a lot less with the character of a dysfunctional former child star, there played by Sarah Jessica Parker. (Substance abuse, adult situations.) leave a comment
