Tom McGillen Brings His Wit to the Laff Stop : Comedy: The comic’s slices of life range from the Cary Grant voice picking up ‘the problem girl’ in a bar to the ‘Godzilla’ routine, his grand closing.

In Tom McGillen’s impression-filled act, the Detroit-born comedian takes on the role of a macho-stud who tries to pick up a beautiful young woman sitting at a bar. Assuming a suave, Cary Grant voice, he approaches the woman and says, “I think you’re beautiful . . . can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure, why not? I’m celebrating,” the woman responds in a less-than-flattering, street-wise tone. “I just got divorced and my ex-husband--he’s crazy. He’s a biker . . . .” From there, she proceeds to run through a laundry list of personal problems: She can’t pay her rent, her mother’s got phlebitis, but they can’t pay the doctor because the insurance company hasn’t paid off on her accident yet. . . .

By the end of the uninterrupted recitation, the once suave “Cary Grant” is reduced to a shrunken kid who sounds just like Beaver Cleaver: “Well, gee lady, sorry life’s so creepy for ya.”

For McGillen fans, “the problem girl” routine has become something of a cult classic.

It’s one of several memorable routines the rubber-faced comedian will be doing at the Laff Stop in Newport Beach today through Sunday. He’s headlining a bill that includes Fred Charles.

McGillen, whose TV credits include “Evening at the Improv,” “Comic Strip Live” and “Showtime’s Comedy Club Network,” weaves a host of voices and characters into his act--everyone from Don Knotts and Katherine Hepburn (doing a U2 song) to blacks and Australians may crop up.

“My comedy is basically people oriented,” McGillen explained in a phone interview from Atlanta. “I observe the public and media and I imitate it. My influences are people like Peter Sellers and Lily Tomlin. Instead of doing jokes about my dad, I do my dad. My dad doing jokes, actually.”

As he says in his act: “My dad’s been a dentist since dentists were barbers. . . . And remember: Four out of five dentists recommend sugarless gum for their patients. Who’s the fifth dentist? He’s my old man.”

Taking on his father’s voice: “Go ahead, chew all the sugar junk you want. You’ll pay for my yacht.”

The one-time Chrysler assembly-line worker and former water-bed salesman quit his day job as a receiving supervisor for a hardware firm in 1982 to become a stand-up comedian.

In writing his own act, McGillen is particularly mindful of staying away from overdone topics. “If I hear another 7-Eleven bit or beating-your-kids-in-K-mart bit or condom joke I’m going to call the 911 comedy police,” he said.

Following the advice of one reviewer who noted that “Star Trek” takeoffs had become nearly as common as 7-Eleven jokes, McGillen even dropped his own popular--and some say the best of the bunch--”Star Trek” routine two years ago.

People still ask to see the bit, he said, “but I say, ‘I’m sorry, I have to move on.’ ”

The one bit McGillen refuses to drop is his takeoff on “Godzilla,” although several other comedians do Japanese movie spoofs in which the characters’ mouths do not sync with the dialogue.

The routine is not only the “grand closing” for his act, McGillen said, “but it was my very first bit,” one he started doing for friends at parties when he was 13.

The triple-character routine includes “Dr. Yamoto,” for which McGillen dons thick, horn-rimmed glasses and comical false teeth made by his dad, the dentist, 30 years ago. (Although some may criticize it for being racially offensive, McGillen maintains that he is simply spoofing a movie genre.)

When McGillen first started doing the bit on stage, it was 15 minutes long. He’s now honed it down to a tight 4 1/2 minutes. “That shows how you start whittling the garbage out of your act,” he said.

Whatever length, the highly visual routine has always gone over big: “I used to do that bit in the first five minutes of my act, and I couldn’t follow myself. “

Tom McGillen and Fred Charles open at the Laff Stop, 2122 S.E. Bristol St., Newport Beach. Show time today: 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $7. Through Sunday. Information: (714) 852-8762.