“Fat Actress”
Tonight at 10 on Showtime
½ (three and a half stars)
THE biggest problem with Kirstie Alley’s wildly innovative, weep-with-laughter new show, “Fat Actress,” is that Alley has signed on in real life with Jenny Craig to lose weight.
No! Don’t do it. If you do, this great, hilarious newshow will have to be called, “Not Fat Actress” – or maybe if you get too thin, “Alley McKirstie.”
On the same wavelength as “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” this semi-scripted, semi-improvisa tional show has a roster of guest stars that reads like the Scientology Celebrity Center meets Star Magazine.
Kirstie plays herself – a, well, fat actress, whom no one wants to hire even though she’s worth her weight in gold – because that would, for sure, break a studio’s budget.
We understand right up front that if Kirstie were a typical starved and full- of-silicone dope, she’d be working until she dropped from exhaustion. But since she’d rather eat than starve, she’s merely starved for work.
The show, like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” follows her fic tionalized day-to-day life, mixed with improv, which keeps it fresh and funny. It’s what “reality” TV can be – and is the polar opposite of depressing train wrecks like “Gastineau Girls,” “The Anna Nicole Show” and “Growing Up Gotti.”
Kirstie’s friends are paid assistants: hair-and-makeup girl Kevyn (Rachel Harris) and go-fer Eddie (Bryan Callen), a disgruntled actor who lies to her about everything all the time and who’s so desperate for a role that he’d quit for a non-speaking part in a hemorrhoid commercial.
Kevyn and Eddie not only help keep her life rolling, but try to help her find (in this order) a job and a man.
Kirstie’s agent, on the other hand – the perfectly cast Michael McDonald – is always trying to get her to accept the Jenny Craig offer, which inevitably sends her into fits of hysterical crying, followed by burger binges.
There’s a movable feast of celebrity guests, including Kirstie’s famous Scientologist pals John Travolta and his wife, Kelly Preston, along with Hollywood heavyweights like NBC honcho Jeff Zucker, hilarious Mark Curry, sexed-up rocker Kid Rock and sexed-up sex kitten Carmen Electra.
On tonight’s premiere, the frustrated fatty gets on the scale and becomes so hysterical that she runs out to get a bag of burgers and fries. Travolta, her neighbor, thinks she’s being murdered and brings the cops.
When the cops find out it’s Kirstie behind all that fat, they are shocked and commiserate with Travolta – who says ” . . . you go to flesh when you stop working out.”
Her assistants decide that she needs sex and has to find a black man because “black men like ample women.” They go to a soul-food place, where Kirstie gets into a fight with a black woman who knows she’s there trolling for men.
Laugh-out-loud stuff reaches a lose-your-breath pinnacle when she sleeps with a black studio exec (Curry) who drools, “Look at you with the L.A. face and the Oakland booty.”
If sex is the most fun you can have while laughing, the second best is watching Kirstie Alley and Mark Curry going at it.
I almost dropped my fried Ding Dong I was laughing so hard. Almost.
