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Jester turned out to be way
off about the Emmys, with the nods going to Everybody Loves Raymond as a sentimental favorite in its final season. It certainly
had one of the better finales of any sitcom -- by sticking to the half-hour running time and not giving in to the temptation
to bloat itself.
The show’s star, Ray Romano, deserves recognition, however, for something else entirely that
has been overlooked. He appeared in the black comedy “Eulogy” that went straight to video in the past year, but
didn’t deserve that fate. In this movie, he stretched his good-guy persona to play a character who, while likeable,
is basically an oaf – characterized to a tee by the way he nonchalantly adds cheese puffs to his breakfast cereal.
As
Skip Collins, Romano is the least objectionable of the siblings brought together by their father’s death, and entertains
by underplaying reactions to his twin sons’ mayhem. In a flashback, we see the final incident that drives Collins wife
to leave, in which the boys mangle a birthday cake she makes them into their version of an erotic cheesecake, to which Romano
says, “Well, somebody’s got to teach them these things.”
Romano deploys his comic timing
in similar fashion in a moment where he’s watching two women fighting and says with a sly grin, “Alright, alright
… that’s … almost enough.” But he also brings other tones to the performance in a scene where the
siblings are smoking pot in a basement rec room and he flips, having a one-sided dialogue with his deceased father in which
he plaintively cries for his dad’s attention. Romano also provides counterpoint to the character of his niece, played
by Zooey Deschanel, as the one family member taking a serious look at things to write the eulogy, as only being able to recall
his father’s love of dirty limericks when asked for material for the speech.
For all of this, Romano deserves credit for being unafraid to do something 180-degrees
from the version of himself he played on his sitcom. And, having atoned for “Welcome to Mooseport” with this performance,
other directors should take notice and deploy him in more roles like this one.
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