January 30, 2006

Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) in Sumo Wrestling Comedy

Jon HederI like Jon Heder as much as the next guy... I enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite... and the guy has some charm. But let's face it folks, he's not going to have a long career. Yes, he has 7 movies in production right now, but this is a classic case of studios wanting to strike while the iron is hot and pump films with him in them out as fast as possible to capitalize in the Dynamite success.

He really wasn't very good in Just Like Heaven, and I haven't liked what I've seen of him so far in The Benchwarmers (but then again I haven't liked anything I've seen from that yet). His movie with Will Ferrell about competing figureskaters (Blades of Glory) sounds funny, but I fear Heder will just be horrible out matched on screen with a guy like Ferrell.

So now come more schtick news for Heder. He's going to star in a movie about the worlds lightest Sumo Wrestler. Yeah... that sounds funny for a 8 minutes Saturday Night Live skit... but 2 hours? I think it'll wear thin pretty fast. The good folks over at Cinema Confidential give us this:

The film will be penned by Steve Faber and Bob Fisher ("The Wedding Crashers") and will loosely be baesd on a true story. The true story is based on the experiences of Joshua Davis, who wrote the book "The Underdog: How I Survived the World's Most Outlandish Competitions." Davis was the lightest man ever to compete at the US Sumo Open two years ago.
Well like I said, I like Heder... but after this initial rush of fast production movies I don't really see him being around for long. Hopefully I'm wrong.


Posted by John Campea at January 30, 2006 09:27 AM


Comments

Yeah, I just have a question. Why does the movie have to be two hours long? It could be an hour and twenty-five minutes. Men In Black 2 that came out a few years ago ran for that long, and not many people seemed to care. I think this would make a servicable enough comedy, but that's probably because I like John Heder a lot.

Posted by: Brian at January 30, 2006 02:02 PM