Cheri Oteri Gets the Last Laugh in Compelling "Surveillance" Film

Save the cheerleader. If you know the origin of that phrase, you watch television. And if you have watched television for more than 15 years then you remember that Cheri Oteri was a super-funny actress and comedienne on Saturday Night Live.

Yes, she was that lady on SNL. She was the one who acted on late nights every Saturday with current Hollywood leading man Will Ferrell as he made his journey from unknown comic guy on SNL back in the 1990s to his big-check, superstar status in Los Angeles. Often the two had many comedy sketches together on the same night.

Things are different these days. As Will Ferrell headlines major movie productions inside cinemas around the country, Ms. Oteri is also in a film. However, her movie is certainly not playing on as many screens.

Director Jennifer Lynch, daughter of auteur David Lynch, has brought us an all-together different kind of murder investigation in the film "Surveillance," according to a review by Moviehole.net. The film needs major stars, of course, and it gets them with legend Julia Ormond and Bill Pullman who play FBI investigators tracking down a possible serial killer. These two Hollywood heavyweights are reason enough to plop down ten bucks to see the movie, but Cheri Oteri tops it off as the reason you should see the flick on the big screen.

The two FBI agents question a few witnesses and try to solve the case on their own without much assistance from the local cops, who may or not have questionably ulterior motives or suspicious involvement. You can bet that the director Jennifer Lynch, the daughter of arguably the most misunderstood director in Hollywood's long line of misunderstood directors, has not strayed far from her genetic lineage in adding different angles and material so that the audience can stay entrenched in the story and plot.

The perspectives and accounts of these witnesses do not fully mesh, according to the San Francisco Chronicle's review of the film.

Cheri Oteri plays the mother of the youngest witness. This movie is probably about as far as any actor can possibly get from Saturday Night Live on NBC. She deserves to get something meaty after all those years of paying her dues on television, those late-night hours entertaining the masses, those countless months standing next to Will Ferrell and seeing him got all the glory and, later, get all the giant big-star movie paychecks.

Cheri Oteri, the actress, does not need to be saved. Yes, she will always be known for being the cheerleader in those SNL sketches with Will Ferrell.

But this movie will make a lot of people forget that past and she can finally move on and up. Let's hear it for Cheri Oteri.

Sources

"'Surveillance': Bill Pullman shows an edgy side," G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 2009.

"Surveillance," Brian Orndorf, Moviehole.net.