Don't you hate it when an actor or actress you used to love watching refuses to fade off into the sunset without a shred of dignity.

Case in point Chevy Chase, the former Saturday Night Live star who had a string of big screen comedy hits in the 1980s.

You remember that painfully-long Don McLean song American Pie. Well forget the levee being dry, recently it's been the Chevy.




I recently stumbled across kid flick Zoom - Academy for Superheroes. It was like watching a carwreck. It was so horrible that you just couldn't look away.

It stars Tim Allen as some former superhero (called Zoom) who must train a group of snot-nosed kids who possess their own individual special abilities.

Apparently it's just a really bad rip-off of Kurt Russell's Sky High (though I haven't actually seen that one).

Anyway, Chevy plays this scientist-type, a little like Q from James Bond who is humiliated time and time again by the spoiled little brat stars of the show.

They do everything from freezing to burning the poor Nobel Prize-winning Dr
Grant.

I know, I know, it's just a kids' movie, and the guy's simply trying to earn a buck but ...

While Zoom takes a little from the days when Chevy was in his prime as Clark Griswald from Vacation, or as Andy Farmer from Funny Farm - the fumbling bumbling albeit lovable idiot always getting screwed over or screwing himself over. It is a case of that was then and this is now. And now he is 65. The lovable part has long gone.




Enough is enough. He should have a look at what his contemporary Bill Murray has been able to do. And that his hold on to his dignity, if not his hair.

There seems to have been a spate of these 'pathetic old bastard' roles in recent years from Chevy - the corrupt US congressman in Bad Meat (2004), the evil school principal in Goose on the Loose (2006) etc, etc.

Chevy, born Cornelius Crane Chase, burst onto the scene in the late-'70s on Saturday Night Live and soon found himself starring in some classic comedies.

First there was Foul Play (1978), followed by Oh Heavenly Dog (1980) Caddyshack (1981), Vacation (1983) Fletch (1985), European Vacation (1985), Spies Like Us (1986), Three Amigos (1986) and Funny Farm (1988).

There was the under-rated Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992), but then that was about it.

Things just haven't been the same since he had his own ill-fated talk show in 1993, The Chevy Chase Show, which lasted just 13 episodes.

The highlight since then has been reprising his role as Clark Griswald in an episode of The Family Guy last year.

Rumoured to be coming up for Chevy is Not Another Not Another Movie (2009).

Pleease...