Mark Curry Movies

Celebrity Mole: Yucatan is the official title of The Mole's fourth season on ABC. As in the previous season's Celebrity Mole: Hawaii, a group of high-profile sports and showbiz personalities (eight players, increased from seven) compete in a variety of grueling and sometime hilarious physical and mental challenges, bearing such designations as "El Taxi Loco," "Salespeople," "Moon Over Yucatan," and "Clucks for Bucks" -- this time playing out the contest in the Yucatan Peninsula rather than the Hawaiian Isles. And as before, one of the eight players is the "mole," planted by the producers to insidiously sabotage and undermine the efforts of the other contestants, through such means as bribery, backstabbing, and downright cheating. In order to win the game, one of two finalists must determine the identity of the "mole" -- and this year every one of the celebrities fits the profile of the perpetrator. Returning from the previous season is host Ahmad Rashad, as well as contestants Stephen Baldwin and Corbin Bernsen. The newcomers include Dennis Rodman, Angie Everhart, Mark Curry, Tracey Gold, Ananda Lewis, and Keshia Knight-Pulliam. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A pair of like-minded artists find their personal lives are suffering at the hands of their creative disappointments in this independent drama. Roper (Fred Parnes) is a documentary filmmaker who loves music and is obsessed with the blues; his latest project has been a film about veteran blues artists, but Roper's inability to find a distributor for the project is making him impossible to live with, which is straining his relationship with his girlfriend, Lily (Paulina Mielech), herself a musician, to the breaking point. Roper's anxieties are also putting a damper on his relationship with his young son, Augie (Anton Yelchin). Meanwhile, Roper's close friend and neighbor, Andy (Chris Rydell), has problems of his own; while Andy is a gifted sax player, he's stuck in a rut he can't seem to get out of, and after inheriting a nest egg from his grandmother, Andy prefers to smoke dope and hang out with his friend, Jeff (Mary Curry), rather than work on his music, which frustrates his girlfriend, Jamie (Heather Roop). Roper's dilemmas doubtlessly rang true for star and director Fred Parnes, who himself directed an acclaimed documentary on the celebrated R&B a cappella group the Persuasions. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Mr. Soulard (Mark Curry), the new owner of Winfred-Louder, allows Drew (Drew Carey) to hire Kate (Christa Miller) as his assistant, despite Drew's reluctance and Kate's lousy employment record. Surprisingly, she proves to be such a discipline freak that she's absolutely perfect for the job--until all of her new power goes to her head, whereupon Mr. Wick (Craig Ferguson) orders Drew to fire her for the good of company morale. Drew timidly puts off Kate's dismissal until the weekend, which nearly sabotages the efforts by Oswald (Diedrich Bader) to win a new car in a grueling (and freezing!) showroom "endurance test". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

At Winfred-Louder's centennial ceremony, elderly board member Arthur Crawford (Hansford Rowe)--who's been with the store for 66 years!--throws away the speech written for him by Drew (Drew Carey) and goes into an adlibbed tirade that manages to offend every ethnic and religious minority on earth. In order to prevent the employees from going on strike in protest, Drew stages an insufferably upbeat (and hopelessly outdated) play about racial tolerance. Elsewhere, Lewis (Ryan Stiles) and little person Doreen (Debbie Lee Carrington)--aka "Mini-Mimi"--begin dating, but don't want to tell anyone. This episode marks the first appearance of Winfred-Louder's new owner Robert Soulard (Mark Curry). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Returning to the store, Mr. Wick (Craig Ferguson) is forced to complete his retraining by working in the mailroom--a humiliation which fuels his desire for vengeance against Drew (Drew Carey). It would seem that Wick has succeeded when, arriving early to open up the store, Drew is bushwacked and hogtied by a cowboy (Jason Rodriguez). As a result, Winfred-Louder opens late for the first time ever, and Drew is instantly demoted. It turns out that Mimi (Kathy Kinney) had hired the cowboy, the better to get Drew out of the way so that she can become manager. Forming a united front, Wick and Drew vow to settle the score with Mimi in a full-scale offensive. Ingredients essential to the outcome of the story include pickles dipped in a grain alcohol, and a pair of remote-control panties! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Hell hath no fury like a football fan scorned in this sport-oriented comedy. The city of Quimby Falls is already going downhill when the owner of the local professional football team, the Buzzards, decides to bail out of the sinking ship and move the franchise elsewhere. But the team's most loyal fan, Charlie Atwater (Edward Asner) -- who even led a marching band to play at the Buzzards' home games -- refuses to take this lying down. After patiently waiting for seven years for the team to return, he decides that it's time to take drastic action. Charlie and his buddies decide to kidnap the team's owner (Barry Corbin) in order for force him to bring the Buzzards back to Quimby Falls. The kidnapping proves disastrous, so they decide to take a slightly different approach and instead abduct the team's quarterback, Fly Walker (Mark Curry). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Inasmuch as Hangin' with Mr. Cooper did not return to the ABC lineup in the fall of 1996, everyone assumed that the series had been cancelled with its 88th episode at the end of Season Four, leaving fans to ponder whether or not high school teacher Mark Cooper (Mark Curry) had finally persuaded his longtime platonic roommate Vanessa Russell (Holly Robinson Peete) to accept his marriage proposal. However, the producers needed to turn out a full 100 episodes in order to ship out the series for local syndication; thus Hangin' with Mr. Cooper was brought back in June of 1997 for 12 additional half-hours, in which it was revealed that, yes, Mark and Vanessa were officially engaged. And in a parallel development, the couple's third roommate, Geneva Lee (Saundra Quarterman) was seriously considering tying the knot with her boyfriend Ken (Kevin Jackson). However, just hours before the wedding of Mark and Vanessa in the series' 100th installment, actors Mark Curry and Holly Robinson Peete) abruptly drop character, turn to the camera, and cheerfully wave goodbye to the audience--and that's the end of the series! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This controversial political drama semi-fictionalizes the history of the radical Black Panther Party, an African-American organization that polarized America from 1966-70. Huey Newton (Marcus Chong) and Bobby Seale (Courtney B. Vance) are a pair of Oakland, California, men who form a new political party dedicated to protecting Blacks from bigoted cops through violent means. Their "Black Panther Party for Self-Protection" serves free lunch to kids, educates the community in African-American awareness, gets drug dealers off the streets, and has gun battles with the Oakland police. Two members of the Panther Party are Tyrone (Bokeem Woodbine) and Judge (Kadeem Hardison). When FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Richard Dysart) suspects that the Black Panthers' leftist leanings are an indication of communist involvement, Judge, an affable Vietnam vet, agrees to become a double agent, reporting to both the Feds and the Panthers. After the Panthers storm the State Assembly in Sacramento, political paranoia grows, and Hoover conspires with the mafia to flood urban streets with cheap heroin, thus destroying the party. Director Mario Van Peebles, who also appears in the role of Stokely Carmichael, worked from a script written by his father, Melvin Van Peebles, based on his book about his real-life experiences with the Black Panthers. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Oakbridge High's favorite substitute teacher Mark Cooper (Mark Curry) continues to live platonically under the same roof as attractive Vanessa Russell (Holly Robinson Peete), music teacher Geneva Lee (Saundra Quarterman) and Geneva's 8-year-old daughter Nicole (Raven-Symone) as Hangin' with Mr. Cooper enters its third season. In the earliest episode, the roommates also share their digs with Mark and Geneva's boss, principal P.J. Moore (Nell Carter), but P.J. moves out soon thereafter to get married--only to be jilted at the altar, leading to a riotous wedding-rehearsal episode in which Mark is pressed into service as a "substitute groom". Though he'd had a chance to be promoted to head athletic coach at Oakbidge, Mark failed to answer any of P.J.'s phone calls during the summers, thus he remains subservient to the school's new coach, Mr. Corley (Steve White). Also added to the recurring cast this season is Steve White as Mark's college buddy Steve Warner, a sports reporter. Among the funnier episodes this year is "The Ringer", wherein Mark is forced to don female garb and pose as the batter of an all-girl baseball team. In the season's cliffhanging finale, it looks as though Vanessa and Mark are poised to go their separate ways when Vanessa accepts the proposal of her new boyfriend, who wants to relocate to New Guinea, and Mark lands a prestigious coaching position at Georgetown University. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

With his career as an NBA player at an end, Mark Cooper (Mark Curry) returns to his home town of Oakland as Hangin' with Mr. Cooper inaugurates its first season. Through the intervention of his childhood friend Robin Dumars (Dawnn Lewis), now a music teacher, Mark is able to secure work as a substitute teacher and assistant coach at his old alma mater, Oakbridge High School, where he must answer to Head Coach Ricketts (Roger E. Mosley). Since their combined incomes don't amount to all that much, Mark and Robin decide to platonically share their living quarters, renting a rather sizeable house in a middle-class Oakland neighborhood. Moving in with the couple is Robin's friend Vanessa Russell (Holly Robinson Peete), who worked for a brokerage firm. Though Mark is clearly smitten by Vanessa, she keeps him at arm's length, saving herself for marriage--preferably a wealthy marriage to a better-looking fellow than Mark. Just as the three main characters saved money by living together, so too did the producers of Hangin' With Mr. Coopereconomize by using as its main set the same house previously occupied by the Seaver family on the recently cancelled sitcom Growing Pains. Rather than hope that the audience wouldn't notice this recycling, the writers deliberately drew attention to it by having Jason Seaver (Alan Thicke) drop into the house in the first episodes to extend his best wishes to the new tenants! (And never mind that Growing Pains was set in New York rather than California!) Among the supporting characters introduced this season is Mark's student Earvin Rodman (Omar Gooding), an affable but oafish fellow who is in his sixth year of high school! And the episode "Miracle in Okinawa" features future series regular Marquise Wilson, not in his familiar role of wisecracking kid Tyler Foster, but instead as an anonymous youngster for whom Mark plays Santa Claus. In the season finale, the roommates break up when Mark decides to move into a new apartment--only to realize that he can't stand living alone. Growing Pains wrapped up its freshman season as the highest-rated new series of the year, tying for fourteenth place in the ratings with The Jackie Thomas Show. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide