Tepid 'Kid' stuff produces few laughs

By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff, 10/22/2003

At a certain point in his career, Barry Williams swallowed an irony pill and accepted the fact that he'd always be seen as Greg Brady. And Williams didn't just loosely embrace his "Brady Bunch" past, he married it, flaunted it, and now continues to cash in on it. Alongside used-to-be somebodies such as Gary Busey, who has turned his motorcycle-addled nut-job reputation into a paying legend, Williams swims with the tide.

Producer Robert Evans seems to be swimming in the same tide, in the ocean of Hollywood celebrities living off memories of their heydays. Evans has wholeheartedly submitted to his image as the 1970s Paramount wonder boy who lost it all in a haze of cocaine, women, and bad press, and he has turned it into his calling card. He has taken on the marketing of his own myth as the man who went from making hits such as "Love Story" and "The Godfather" to the gutter, first with his 1994 memoir and the 2002 documentary based on it, "The Kid Stays in the Picture," and now with an animated Comedy Central series called "Kid Notorious" that premieres tonight at 10:30. He is creating a second life in commemoration of his first.

While they both promote the lore of Evans and his gonzo movie-biz adventures, "Kid Notorious" is quite a different beast from "The Kid Stays in the Picture." The cartoon is a satire, partly of Evans, who voices his own character, but mostly of the people with whom Evans has done battle over the years, including Francis Ford Coppola and Sharon Stone. Indeed, the premiere features an extremely mean bit on Stone, who worked with Evans in the 1993 dud "Sliver." The cartoon Stone is a botoxic prima donna who leaves Evans high and dry after dropping out of his movie to do her own version of -- cue the "Basic Instinct" jokes -- "The Vagina Monologues." Evans occasionally goofs on his own need for credit, or his penchant for bad ideas, but most of the harsh jabs in "Kid Notorious" are aimed at others.

Each episode finds Evans trying to get out of a pickle and ultimately saving the day with his mixture of Zen calm and decadence. When his bad driving gets him thrown in jail, he proceeds to serve up cosmopolitans to his cellmates and persuade them to make "Godfather: The Hip-Hop Musical." In another episode, he loses and then regains his beloved Beverly Hills home to French president Jacques Chirac in a poker game. He is helped every week by a collection of trusty sidekicks, including his cat, Puss Puss, his housekeeper, Tollie Mae, and his butler, English, who is voiced by Evans's real butler, Alan Selka. Also on hand: Evans's real-life neighbor, the guitarist Slash.

Ultimately, "Kid Notorious" is tepid. It's hard to care about Evans's old grudges toward the likes of Coppola, and the portrayals of current celebrities such as Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (as Oscar-clenching twins) aren't clever. And the cartoon strains in its efforts to be politically incorrect, to align itself with Comedy Central's more successful "South Park." The constant ethnic and racial stereotypes aren't funny or outrageous, from tonight's opening Lucy Liu bit about Asians to the ongoing presence of Tollie Mae, who is the cliche of a heavyset black woman forever wagging her hand and shaking her neck. If you're going to fool with offensiveness, you've got to be freshly twisted.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.

Kid Notorious

Starring the voices of: Robert Evans, Niecy Nash, Alan Selkaall

On: Comedy Central

Time: Tonight, 10:30-11

Rated: TV14