A swamp of wasted comic ingenuity, Run Ronnie Run has about 10 minutes of clever, even hilarious parody to its name before being cleaned out of laughs. For the remainder of the time, this Sundance handout spun off from David Cross and Bob Odenkirk's hilarious HBO program Mr. Show With Bob and David, stumbles along, confusing with trendy and audacious all the infantile throwaways and pop culture references that it tediously stretches to frame its running time. Camouflaged behind a bulletproof mullet, Cross plays the Ronnie in question, a beer-gorging deadbeat hayseed who whiles away the hours wreaking havoc on his Georgia hometown. His exploits are caught on tape by a Cops-like reality show called Fuzz, and he's noticed by pathetic infomercial personality/inventor Terry Twillstein, played by an astute Bob Odenkirk, who sees Ronnie's popularity with lowbrow viewers. He promotes the idea to TV executives for a show in which he is arrested in a different city each week. The show becomes phenomenally successful, making Ronnie rich and famous, surprise surprise.

But while the text isn't up to Mr. Show's lofty benchmark, some big laughs do emerge, as when Hollywood stars beseech Ronnie to rob them, or when Ronnie's one semblance of soul-searching on death row involves his last meal: waffles, squarely nosing out corn dogs. Cross and Odenkirk, who ultimately disowned this movie, hardly reproduce a shred of the wit of any one of various sundry sketches from their show, but David Koechner has some time here to do his thing as an illiterate alcoholic redneck moron and Sarah Silverman Program regular Brian Posehn is one of the writers.

Ronnie's guilelessness is essentially a one-dimensional gag. Cross can be hilarious, but he's just more fitting when he's bald. Here his act is eclipsed by the innumerable celebrity cameos such as Jack Black, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, John and Rebecca Romijn Stamos, Ben Stiller, Jeff Goldblum, Mandy Patinkin, Kathy Griffin, etc., and episodes which don't follow at all from the premises, including one that reveals the "gay conspiracy" overseen by Patrick Warburton and forces them to give up their plot for world domination. It's completely non-sequitary in the film, and it's particularly memorable.

I watched this movie with a friend who described it as the funniest thing she'd ever seen. Naturally I approached it with some scepticism and was fairly underwhelmed considering her huge endorsement of it. That's not to say that Run Ronnie Run isn't funny. Like many low budget films of its sort it has some utterly hysterical moments: the malfunctioning blender for one, or Ronnie endeavouring to make his girlfriend Tammy jealous being another.

However, some of the jokes are overworked and some of the characters are more annoying than funny. For example: David Koechner (who you may recognise as Champ from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) as Clay manages to be both overworked and less than amusing as the narrator, his voice slow and dreary rather than comedic, and as the victim of Ronnie's more outlandish stunts. His 'It's not your fault...' line really isn't that funny the first time, let alone the third.

So this is a film that's worth seeing once or twice but probably wasn't worth a cinematic release. Certainly it's not something I'll be rushing out to buy any time soon, though after a few pints it's exactly the sort of movie to make you think 'Why not?'

Run, Ronnie, Run is a comedy with the rare distinction of having an excellently written script, especially since it was meant to sound dumb. Ronnie Dobbs is your typical beer guzzling redneck who can't seem to avoid getting himself arrested, and who always seems to have his elaborate arrests caught on film and broadcast on television.

Some dumb guy is discovered through his unenviable skill of getting embarrassingly arrested, has a TV show created around his arrests, and becomes an instant star. Clearly, this is not Oscar material. In fact, a plot outline like that leads you to believe that it will be just another bonehead comedy in the moronic tradition of American Pie and Road Trip and Big Momma's House. However, Run, Ronnie, Run proves to be much more than any of those movies.

Not only is it packed full of sidesplitting comedy, it is also presented in numerous unique ways. The film opens with an introduction by an elderly man whose vulgar speech prepares the audience for the sheer hilarity that is to follow. The rest of the movie is sparsely narrated by Clay, one of Ronnie's accident-prone friends who is the funniest redneck I've seen in a movie in years, besides Ronnie himself. David Cross delivers a hilarious performance in this film, and hopefully this movie will allow people to forgive him for his part in the pathetic Scary Movie 2.

As is necessary in a comedy like this, the dialogue is full of great comedy, but the thing that makes this movie unique is that it is not only hilarious but it's very well written. There are lots of very simple but very effective speech gags, like Ronnie's dim-witted comment to a police officer who was being excessively angry with a young kid (who happened to be the officer's son), as well as his charming response to his stripper girlfriend (one of the many products of his instant fame) when her very presence doesn't manage to create the response that he hopes for in his ex. And by the way, it's just not the same to read all this in a review, you have to see this stuff for yourself. Not only is it more effective to see it all for yourself, but there is so much uproarious comedy in this movie that it is impossible to list it all in one review.

Every character in this film is significant and well presented, and the movie never gets boring or slow. There are a couple of things that could have been left out, such as the Mary Poppins spoof about giving your woman a good old kick in the c*nt, as well as the eventual fate of Clay, but even this childish and sometimes crude and grotesque humor is not enough to bring down the movie as a whole. This is a great comedy in the tradition of Dumb & Dumber, although I can't say that the movie actually manages to pass that one up as far as sheer quality.

Even though there were a few things that were a little excessive or did not need to be in the movie, Run, Ronnie, Run is still a tremendously amusing and entertaining film. Every character in the film will have you cheering, and there is even one noteworthy scene where the town Mayor's fat, video game addicted son gets p***ed off and does something that will make every jaw in the audience drop. That's one of the best scenes in the film, and the irony is one of the things that made it such a good scene. I assure you that I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the best comedies to come along in years. It is so rare to see a comedy that is driven by the mishaps and misfortune of the uneducated (and inbred?) that is able to overcome the simplicity of its content and come off as such a fulfilling and entertaining comedy. Definitely do not miss this one.