1994's It's Pat: The Movie is Just Sad

Is it the worst Saturday Night Live movie? Probably!

It’s Pat: The Movie’s existence is sublime meta joke about the mercenary desperation of Lorne Michaels’ venerable comedy institution and its eagerness to opportunistically crank out movies about even its weakest and worst recurring characters. 

Recurring characters don’t come weaker or worse than Julia Sweeney’s Pat Riley, a bespectacled, chubby, curly haired human irritant whose androgyny confuses and enrages people who cannot tell whether Pat is man or a woman. 

Yet that somehow did not keep studios from deluding themselves into thinking that a widely reviled character who wears out their welcome in a five minute sketch could somehow carry a 90 minute movie. 

Some lunatic looked at a one joke sketch that was problematic and regressive at the time of its release and decided that, like 2001, Lawrence of Arabia and Citizen Kane only the big screen could contain its riches and wonder. 

Why? Why did anyone think that there needed to be a Pat movie? What was it about this particular piece of intellectual property that cried out angrily for the cinematic treatment? What were they thinking? What was wrong with them? 

Pat Riley was initially designed as a character whose humor came from being the obnoxious weirdo at work who makes everyone uncomfortable with their off-putting personality and oddball obsessions. 

One of the hardest things to do in comedy is create a character who is simultaneously obnoxious and hilarious, aggravating and entertaining. 

It' a combination that’s damn near impossible to get right. Two examples that spring to mind are Bill Murray in What About Bob? and Energy Vampire Colin Anderson in What We Do in the Shadows. 

These are the exceptions that prove the rule. When the other characters in a movie or television show find someone obnoxious and insufferable there is VERY good chance that we'll hate them as well. 

That's Pat Riley in It’s Pat. Somewhere along the line the character’s joke de-evolved from being annoying to being androgynous. Yet the character remains a chore to endure for the length of a sketch, let alone a movie. 

It’s Pat’s premise is the same as countless lazy sketches through the decades. What if a character who behaves in a colorful and eccentric fashion were to encounter another character who behaves in a similarly colorful and eccentric way? Wouldn't that be funny? Or at least eat up five minutes of screen-time? 

In It’s Pat the title character’s ostensible double is Chris (Dave Foley). Like Pat, Chris has an androgynous name and it is not immediately apparent what their gender might be. 

Pat and Chris are supposed to be simpatico soulmates. They're supposed to be unicorns who magically found someone just like them. 

Here's the thing: Kris is ultimately NOTHING like Pat and the idea that they’re identical because they don't conform to either male of female gender norms is deeply insulting. It'd be like a movie assuming that a Prince and a man who steals car radios for a living are perfect for each other because they’re both gay. 

Pat is a fuck up. Pat makes people uncomfortable because Pat challenges conventional notions of gender and sexuality but also because Pat is just the fucking worst. 

Pat has a hard time holding onto a job because Pat does things like open mail during an ill-fated stint as a postal worker and unleashes a giant glob of mucus on a customer's plate during an equally doomed time as a sushi chef. 

Pat gets fired because they’re wildly unprofessional but also because Pat’s terrible personality alienates everyone around them. 

Chris, on the other hand, has no problem holding down a responsible job because she seems to have at least a basic understanding of social decorum. Chris similarly is able to hold onto friends because Chris does not have the world’s worst personality. Pat does.

Chris has the patience of a saint when dealing with Pat. Pat doesn’t have character flaws: Pat IS one giant character flaw. 

Perhaps the only thing that makes Pat just barely palatable  is that Pat seems one hundred percent comfortable with their sexuality and gender, whatever they might be. Pat should go through life anxious and full of anxiety like the rest of us yet they are inexplicably happy with a life of loneliness, rejection and failure. 

The unanswerable question of Pat’s gender obsesses Kyle Jacobsen (Charles Rocket). Rocket was famously supposed to be the Chevy Chase of the post-Lorne Michaels Saturday Night Live. That did not happen for reasons that go beyond him swearing on air but he went on to have a solid career as a character actor after getting fired from the show. 

Rocket represents All-American suburban manhood in all its poignant banality. So the idea that he would become sexually obsessed with a person whose gender he does not know is supposed to come off as something between a kink, a perversion and a mental illness. 

Gender and sexuality are both rich, broad spectrums. There is a performative element to sexuality. The ostensible humor of It's Pat, and I say ostensible because there is no actual humor in the film, comes from Pat and, to a lesser extent, Chris refusing to engage in that performance. 

At the same time there's something deeply troubling and reactionary about treating a character who is conventionally attractive being sexually attracted to one who is not as so bizarre and inexplicable as to be comic. 

As part of his strange obsession, Kyle sends a tape of Pat playing the tuba to a bottom-feeding television show called America's Creepiest People hosted by the late Arleen Sorkin, the original Harley Quinn.

America’s Creepiest People’s title betrays its exploitative nastiness. That somehow does not keep Pat from seeing it as her springboard to super-stardom as a musician.

Watching movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches invariably makes me think about Run Ronnie Run and how the comic geniuses behind it were inundated with notes from executives on how audiences had to be able to root for Ronnie Dobbs and be invested in his journey and his search for love and meaning in an uncertain world. 

The reality is that Ronnie Dobbs does not need to go on a journey of self-discovery. He doesn’t need to find himself. He just needs to be a funny idiot for audiences to laugh at. 

On a similar note the makers of It’s Pat wrestled with the question of what Pat means in this context. What is Pat’s ultimate goal? What is important to Pat? 

They decided that Pat’s journey would be a professional one. Pat begins the film as someone who cannot hold onto a job and furthermore does not see particularly interested in the concept of employment. 

Then Pat ends up on America's Creepiest People. This brings them to the attention of Ween, who have Pat perform with them onstage as a one time only special attraction that Pat thinks is a permanently gig. Pat thinks they’re part of the band when they're just a sideshow to Ween's three ring circus. 

Dean and Gene Ween are hilarious in their music. They are incredible performers and musicians. They’re every bit as lost and overwhelmed delivering a substantial amount of dialogue as the legendary session musicians/funnymen of Blues Brothers 2000. 

Oh, and at a certain point Pat becomes the popular host of a radio advice call-in show due to her genius for saying blunt and colorful things on air, not unlike a distaff Loqueesha from the film of the same name.

Saturday Night Live movies have casts lousy with alum of the long-running television show. Also, they're generally lousy. Yet the only Saturday Night Live cast member here other than Rocket and Sweeney is Tim Meadows. Everyone else apparently knew well enough to stay the hell away.

It’s Pat doesn't even last eighty minutes. It’s seventy seven minutes of deleted scenes that somehow never got deleted that could not have aged worse.  

If It’s Pat were to be made today it would consist of someone nervously asking Pat for their pronouns and having them say that they identify as non-binary and don’t feel entirely male or female. 

This version would last a minute and a half and feature no conflict and no jokes. It would still be preferable to what we ended up getting. 

What’s up next? I dunno, Mr. Saturday Night?