Critic wrangle: "Run, Fat Boy, Run."

Friday, March 28, 2008 | 1:12 PM

Everyone loves Simon Pegg, but few are willing to extend that sentiment to his new film "Run, Fat Boy, Run," a rom-com about a London slacker (Pegg) who tries to win back the woman (Thandie Newton) he left at the altar by running a marathon, also happens to be David Schwimmer's directorial debut. "I wouldn't believe that Run, Fat Boy, Run was co-written by Simon Pegg (of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) if he weren't up there on the screen in teeny briefs and with his gut stuck out, trying to endear himself to the American audience in material maybe a notch above Rob Schneider's," sighs David Edelstein at New York. Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly is reminded of another highbrow comedian, calling the script one "Adam Sandler wouldn't have pulled out of his bottom drawer." At Slant, Nick Schager complains that "Run, Fatboy, Run so slavishly hews to a familiar rom-com template that it quickly makes itself irrelevant, its few idiosyncratic particulars unable to prevent everything from feeling like the same-old tripe with a cute Brit accent." "The forthcoming comedic overhaul signified by Pegg's involvement given past outings in genre spoofs "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" never arrives; you can only scratch your head, wishing the actor would bring self-awareness to his rom-com confines with a wink and a nudge," writes Kristi Mitsuda at indieWIRE, while Nathan Rabin at the Onion AV Club finds "There's bittersweet humor in watching Pegg struggle to become the man he and his family need him to be, but this is still the sort of formulaic, high-concept fare it's easy to imagine [screenwriter Michael Ian] Black dryly lampooning in his capacity as VH1's in-house smartass."

There are a few tentative bits of praise, though, mostly Pegg-centric: Jim Ridley at the Village Voice declares that "Pegg has staked out a peculiar slant on genre material that ventures beyond irony toward rehabilitation--and nobody plays blithe humiliation with more style." At the New York Times, Matt Zoller Seitz writes that "'Run, Fat Boy, Run' is the kind of movie that's apt to be dismissed a goofy lark. It is that. But it's also a rare comedy that believes in its own message, and that could inspire the depressed and the demoralized to grit their teeth and keep running." And the short shorts redeem the film for Salon's Stephanie Zacharek: "The sight of Pegg in those very small smalls is one of the best visuals in 'Run Fatboy Run,' and it's not the only time he seems to be carrying the picture on his sturdy, if not brawny, shoulders."

[Photo: "Run, Fat Boy, Run," New Line Cinema, 2007]