Big Stan

Big Stan is a significant film in Rob Schneider’s career in that it will be his first that opens cinematically solely in Bulgaria and will be banished direct to video in all other countries, including the United States.

Schneider’s path to the comedic backwaters of bargain dustbins at Woolworths began brightly enough with his first major starring role Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo spawning an entertaining, if scatological, sequel (which says an awful lot if you've seen the first) and the parlance ManWhore for a male prostitute.

The Animal followed, along with countless cameos in Adam Sandler movies, but it was the excreable The Hot Chick which began the slide and, with Sandler falling out of favour State-side too (his upcoming You Don't Mess The Zohan will do little to further his stock), there seems to be a slide away from the auteur comedy with new hands Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen peddling a far better shtick of recent times.

Our comedy scenario this time round is that Schneider is fraudulent Timeshare huckster kingpin Stan who manages to finagle his way out a mandatory sentence for fraud to put his affairs in order and through many montages attempts to become “unrapeable” to his soon to be fellow inmates. When Stan finally makes his way to jail, the predictable mismatched cellmates and courtyard antics were never going to be The Shawshank Redemption, but they don’t even reach the heights of Stir Crazy.

Plenty of familiar faces are wheeled out - poor old David Carradine plays a kung-fu master from hell and Henry Gibson is underused in his role as the old-timer, but the torture lasts for an interminable hour and three quarters of poor taste rape jokes, when it could have happily been 80 minutes and even then it would have been 70 minutes too long. Schneider’s awful tan/make-up is bizarrely thrown away in a single line - he is apparently half-black. Where did that come from? Maybe a “funny joke” thrown in from the director: Rob Schneider.

Extras: None.

Released on 11th August 2008 by Momentum Pictures.

Written by Simon Cole.