THE FADED SPOTLIGHT

The White House has a problem, and it’s not policy, political shenanigans, or national security. It has to do with the president’s son: he’s a brat. So they call in Sinbad—a Secret Service lackey or overpaid babysitter, depending on the scene. As you might expect, he makes things at the same time better and worse.

Sinbad plays Sam Simms, who is quietly reassigned to this garbage detail after his predecessor is caught “mistreating” the kid on camera. The kid’s name is Luke (Brock Pierce), a preteen with a knack for testing the limits of whatever adult is tasked with keeping him in check. Simms, though, mostly just tries not to lose his job.

The arc is familiar—basically Guarding Tess for the Capri Sun crowd. The pair have a mutual dislike. It softens over time. This version has a climactic school dance, a boxing montage, a bit of a cyberstalker subplot. What might be most nostalgic is its glimpse of early Internet culture. The kid engages in a chatroom exchange, and a user types “lol” and then immediately follows that with “(laughing out loud),” because not everyone knew what that meant in 1996. How adorbs.

The comedy relies heavily on pratfalls, cafeteria-type gags, and Sinbad—who has precisely one volume setting, along with a trademark grin. He doesn’t really have much to work with here. Not that he would have done much with it even if the material were decent. The script consists mostly of pep talks and mildly exasperated one-liners.

I can remember seeing this back in the 1990s—my middle school years. It probably says more than you need to know about this movie that all I could remember about it was the brief cameo from Sonny Bono, who briefly walked on and off frame. There’s also a cameo from Bill Clinton, who recorded a bit specifically for the film—flickering on a small screen.

While I’d hardly call First Kid aggressively bad, it isn’t more than an idle, forgettable children’s film. Disney on autopilot, as they so often are. Watch it, forget it, move on to the next one.

Bobby Dupea (Jack Nicholson) once had everything people spend their lives chasing—talent, comfort, a family that spoke in full sentences. But he walked away from it. Now he’s working an oil rig. It’s not much, but at least he can stand it. He can also stand his girlfriend Rayette (Karen Black)—at least for now. She loves him more than he deserves, even if he just acts like she’s one more thing to run away from.

But under all that mess, there’s something that you’d never guess about him in a million years. He’s a pianist. And a great one, at that. He could once play Chopin—beautifully, even if carelessly. Much like the way some people lie. But pursuing this talent further would have meant settling. Resting on his laurels. And he doesn’t want to rest. The one thing that he could never stand is something that lasts.

Then a letter shows up: his father’s had two strokes. So Bobby packs a bag and heads home, even if he lies to himself and pretends it’s out of duty and not out of guilt. He means to go alone, but his girlfriend Rayette has a meltdown worthy of daytime TV. (It involves lots of sobbing and Tammy Wynette tapes.) And the ensuing trip feels like America on Ambien—bowling alleys, gray diners. They even pick up a hitchhiker (Helena Kallianiotes) who rants about how filthy everything is and—strangely—sounds positively optimistic compared to him.

When he finally reaches the family estate, the tone shifts. The movie stops being a road trip. He’s met by a family that has achieved a kind of paralysis. His sister (Lois Smith) plays piano like it’s a religion, his brother-in-law intellectualizes everything that breathes, and his father—mute and broken—sits like a monument to everything Bobby refuses to become. He hides Rayette in a motel—partly to shield him from the judgmental glares from his family—but also because he picks up another woman (Susan Anspach). Any prospect of a permanency on Rayette’s part was doomed from the start. The only kind of commitment that Bobby was ever good at: temporary.

Rafelson shoots the film like he’s allergic to polish. Every frame looks unvarnished, almost accidental, and that suits the film. Nicholson gives you a man circling his own ruin—brilliant, lazy, funny, and cruel, sometimes in the same minute. The diner scene where he tries to order toast still hits as one of cinema’s finest guffaws. Though it also reveals a man begging to be told “no” just so that he has a chance to blow up about it. Later, in the back of a truck, he plays piano while the wind rips the music away. Poetry, perhaps, but not the kind that would save anybody.

Five Easy Pieces isn’t about failure—it’s about the addiction to it. The pleasure of motion, the lie of escape. By the end, Bobby’s back on the road, heading north. He vanishes into the cold and into the nothing. He’s not looking for redemption. Just continuation, meaningless or not. For him, and people like him, leaving is the only thing that lasts.