Mary McCormack

When it comes to the subject of community, David E. Kelley--the prolific writer-producer behind television's The Practice and Ally McBeal--falls somewhere on a continuum between directors Howard Hawks and Robert Benton. While Hawks's professional characters are bound by a knowledge of how to do what they do even if they don't know why, Benton's people, professional or not, have long ago substituted their own eccentric reasons for that elusive why.

David Spade embodies Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star with the snide, glib, and bored attitude for which he is loved by his fans. Dickie, whose mother abandoned him in his youth when his TV show was canceled, yearns to regain the spotlight. But he can't get a promising role because the director believes that Dickie isn't a real person; so, to find his real self, Dickie hires a family to give him the childhood he never had.