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`Saturday Night Live' alums' careers dying slowly

Remember when you looked forward to staying home on a Saturday night? A night out on the town could, at one time, be easily passed over for a solid episode of "Saturday Night Live."

After all, what could be better than curling up with a hot, buttery bag of popcorn, a blanket and an hour and a half of some pretty damn funny comedic sketches?

We all know the skits from television -- everything from David Spade's recent "And you are ... ?" and Adam Sandler's "Opera Man," to Kevin Nealon's "Weekend Updates," to the wood-paneled basement party with Wayne and Garth.

We don't have to stay home anymore to see them. "Saturday Night Live" is making its leap from television to the big screen.

Lucky for us. Instead of staying in to see our favorites -- among them, Sandler, Spade and Farley -- we must pay six bucks to see the old acts once broadcast for free.

So where did this recent trend begin? The answer is simple: With "Wayne's World, Wayne's World, party time, EXCELLENT!" Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey certainly hammed it up for two hours on the big screen; their ridiculous logic and many "Sheaahhhh rights" were funny for the 30th time, if not the 1,000th.

Still, the success of the original "Wayne's World" movie not only paved the way for a less-successful sequel but also for a whole slew of "SNL" invasions that, over the past month and years, have been taking over cinema as we know it.

INVASION NO.1: It all started with "The Coneheads" several years ago. Starring Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin, an eccentric (to say the least) family walked around with penises on their heads as they tried to cope with a strange lifestyle on a new planet.

Big mistake: As we soon discovered, "The Coneheads" should have stayed put on NBC. Now, periodically, we are forced to remember this flop as it appears on HBO over and over again.

INVASION NO. 2: "Billy Madison," anyone? In this lackluster 1995 film, Adam Sandler plays some rich kid who goes back to elementary school to impress his dad. His silly antics and school-kid stunts triggered little, if any, laughter from film audiences.

So what does Sandler do? He makes "Happy Gilmore." Same story, different setting; first, we see Sandler with an elementary-school bathroom pass, and now he's shifting gears with his hard-hitting golf swing.

Maybe he's cute ... and maybe Sandler's pranks are even (as we painfully admit) fun to watch at times. But somehow, his act is more fun when Sandler is doing what he knows best -- "Opera Man" and other skits on television.

Hey, we don't even mind if he sings once in awhile, but by putting himself on the big screen yet again, Sandler is doing nothing but adding to the reprehensible "SNL" trend of fomer cast members who can't make it in the movies (for further evidence, see below).

INVASION NO. 3: Here, we are hit hard by the double whammy acting efforts of -- you guessed it -- Chris Farley and David Spade. In 1994, this duo teamed up in a feeble attempt to make us laugh with "Tommy Boy."

Unfortunately, for many of us, two hours of watching Farley as the Big Stupid Loser Boy and Spade as the Scrawny Smart Dorky Dude did not do the trick (despite the efforts of our younger siblings to convince us they did).

Much to our dismay, this pair was also responsible for INVASION NO. 4. In case we didn't laugh the first time around, Farley and Spade gave moviegoers another chance with their latest release "Black Sheep," or more accurately "Tommy Boy -- Part Two." How nice of them.

But wait ... there's more. Remember Stuart Smalley (you know -- the dude who sits in front of a mirror, whispering, `I am a 10 and gosh darn it, people like me')? How can we forget about his movie "Stuart Saves His Family?" Enough said. "Stuart" can just be added to the list of flops contributing to the downward spiral of "SNL" on the big screen.

Didn't it all seem much more funny when the sketches were just 10 minutes long? Suddenly, we're in the theaters for two hours, and we are, in most cases, not laughing.

And where is this trend going? Dare we ask? From a takeoff of Jack Handey's "Deep Thoughts" to "The Gap," we can only -- with fear -- guess what's next.