Corky Romano (2001) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

This was probably the worst-reviewed film of 2001. Even the dreadful "Freddy Got Fingered" scored 11% good reviews, and scored with some of the hipper, younger, anti-establishment critics, but "Corky" got 6% good reviews. I guess you could calculate that it was about half as funny as Tom Green's movie. How funny is half of Freddy Got Fingered? Well, James Berardinelli did the math, and summed it up pretty effectively: "There are more laughs in Schindler's List".

Comedy, of course, is a subjective thing, so I'd rather focus on the complete lack of a script.

Now here's how the comedy actually played out.

• They set up a veterinarian's office and said "Ok, Chris (Kattan), do something funny." Verbal humor is not Chris's thing, so his response was to stumble around from corner to corner knocking things over and making funny faces.
• Then they set up an FBI gym and told Chris to be funny in pretending that he knew the obscure form of martial arts on his resume. He made a funny face while a woman punched him in the nuts.
• Then the FBI got him to translate between a Vietnamese bad guy and a Chinese bad guy, because he had mastery of those two languages listed among his false credentials. When the Vietnamese guy said something, he would repeat the exact same thing back, same with the Chinese guy, until the situation escalated to the point where funny faces were appropriate.
• Repeat hundreds of times, as needed, ending each scene with Chris stumbling and making funny faces.

They say Kattan's face was so tired after this film that he couldn't roll his eyes or purse his lips for a month, and would actually talk to people for hours at a time without mugging.

Kattan's boss was Original Shaft (Richard Roundtree). Sometimes one of the other agents would say "boss, Romano can't be a real agent. All he can do is make funny faces". At this point Shaft would ignore the whining of the other agents, turn to give Kattan a medal of honor, and say, "nice funny face, Corky, that really helped us to flush out the 'I hate funny faces' killer. But don't be such a cowboy, going in there alone. Next time call for funny face back-up."

The humor is strictly on the grade school level, maybe lower.

Imagine you have a friend who likes to run through the entire script of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, doing a bad impersonation of Jim Carrey. Except, unlike Carrey who has a special knack for acting so stupid that he's obviously making fun of people who act stupid, your friend has no concept of how to pull it off, and just seems a little dumber than the people he's making fun of. Now imagine that your friend can't actually remember any of the funny lines in Ace Ventura, so he just does Carrey's physical schtick.

Your friend is Chris Kattan. 

Chris's IMDb credits, when sorted by ratings, give you a profile of a career with true Pauly Shore potential:

1. (5.21) - House on Haunted Hill (1999)
2. (5.06) - Lucky Numbers (2000)
3. (4.95) - Monkeybone (2001)
4. (4.92) - Corky Romano (2001)
5. (4.83) - Night at the Roxbury, A (1998)

And the worst-rated one on the list was the one where Chris also got a writing credit. It seem reasonable to say that, so far in his career, the more involvement he has had in the projects, the worse they have been, although there is really not much numerical difference between the best and worst projects on that list.

1. (3.71) - Dennis the Menace Strikes Again (1998) (V)
2. (2.79) - Chairman of the Board (1998)

I think you probably know of whom I speak.