He’s so big that Dave, Jay, and Oprah literally stand in his shadow. He’s the biggest small-town celebrity interviewer that Butte, Montana has ever had to offer.

He’s Jiminy Glick, and now devotees of the Comedy Central series Primetime Glick can see his character’s struggles before all the fame and glory, in Jiminy Glick in Lalaland.

Of course, Glick is the creation of Canadian comedy veteran Martin Short, and while the thought of sketch comedies getting big-screen treatment is usually enough to send moviegoers running for cover, Short and co-writers Paul Flaherty and Michael Short are able to take the barest of plots, combine it with the Glick TV show’s improv style, and actually make an improvised movie that works.

The plot concerns Jiminy arriving to cover the Toronto International Film Festival with wife Dixie (Jan Hooks) and twin sons Matthew and Modine in tow. He’s bored with interviewing the same guests over and over again in Butte, and TO is his ticket to the big time. Or so he thinks.

Reality starts to set in when he realizes that his reservations are not for the Fairmont Hotel, but the Fairmount Motel. Then none of the celebrities he talks to seems to know who he is. Kevin Kline gives him a polite but firm brush-off, and when the research-challenged interviewer talks to Whoopi, he thinks he’s talking to Oprah. Fate steps in when he falls asleep at a screening of Growin’ Up Gandhi, and winds up being the only critic in town to give it a rave review. Ben DiCarlo (Corey Pearson), the film’s reclusive and egotistical director-star, agrees to his first interview in five years, thereby catapulting Jiminy to A-list status. Access Hollywood wants to talk to him, as do Kurt Russell and Steve Martin. Fading Hollywood star Martha Cooledge (Elizabeth Perkins) wants to talk to Jiminy too, and when she’s later found dead in his bed, he thinks he’s to blame and gets tangled in a whodunit involving her narcissistic and malaprop-prone manager and two rappers.

As a comment on society’s obsession with celebrity and infotainment, Lalaland is sharp, hilarious, and brilliant. It’s also refreshing to see Jiminy take a break from his cluenessness long enough to care for the wildly alcoholic Dixie. With the noirish murder subplot, things tend to lose focus and bog down, though it does allow Martin Short to evoke SCTV memories by doing a dead-on David Lynch impression. While you’ll enjoy it more if you’re a Primetime Glick fan, Lalaland is certainly worth seeing as an industry satire that you won’t have to strain your brain to enjoy.