FILM REVIEW OF ''STEAMBOAT BILL, JR" (1928-SILENT)

This imaginative comedy lacks the prestige of Buster Keaton's classic American Civil War comedy "The General." Nevertheless,"Steamboat Bill, Jr." (***1/2 out of ****)surpasses "College." Clocking in at a concise 69 minutes, this amusing father and son reconciliation drama includes a romance along the lines of William Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet." Furthermore, the narrative chronicles the emergence of our diminutive protagonist as a man who can master his fate after he appeared destined for disaster. In other words, Buster casts himself as an underdog again as he did in "College." The problem with this existential comedy is our hero's transition from a clumsy nincompoop to an expert acrobat who can perform high dives off the top of a steamboat and rig it up in such a way so he can operate it single-handedly lacks credibility. The only shred of evidence that our eponymous hero has what it takes occurs when he surprises the sheriff, slugs him in the stomach, and watches as the fellow falls like an avalanche. More amazing than any of Buster's clever sight gags as he learns his way around the paddle wheeler is the spectacular special effects. Remember, the special effects personnel pulled off these stunts long before computer-generated special effects were available.

The Carl Harbaugh story concerns a pugnacious Mississippi River paddle wheeler captain who meets his son, Willie (Buster Keaton of "The Three Ages"), for the first time since he last saw him as an infant in the crib. Essentially, Bill does not know what Willie looks like. Meantime, Willie arrives at River Junction from Boston dressed like a fashionable college graduate, wearing a beret, sporting a pencil thin mustache, a spotted bow-tie, and carrying a ukulele under his arm. He has sent his father a telegram informing him that he will be able to recognize him by the white carnation that he will be wearing in his coat lapel. Unfortunately, Willie seems to have forgotten that it is Mother's Day and everybody is wearing a white carnation. Bill (Ernest Torrence of "Captain Salvation") and his First Mate, Tom Carter (Tom Lewis of "Adam and Eva"), head off to the railway station fully expecting to greet a big strapping lad twice the size of William Canfield, Sr. Nobody at the train station fits the description of the elder Canfield's son. As the Southern Railway locomotive with the number 45 on it pulls out, it turns out that Willie Canfield has been out of sight on the other side of the tracks. He makes an idiot out of himself as he approaches all the men in the station and flashes his carnation at them. Eventually, Willie loses the carnation, but he does not realize it and keeps poking his empty lapel into the faces of strangers. Finally, Bill recognizes Willie by the tag on his luggage while Willie is dancing and playing his ukulele for a baby in a stroller. Clearly, the 1920s were a different age altogether when babies could be left unattended in carriages at a public place without fear of being abducted.

Once he has picked his son up at the depot, Bill ushers Willie into a barber chair and orders the barber to shave off the "barnacle" of a mustache on his lip. Later, Bill drags Willie to a haberdashery to replace the beret with a hat that a man would wear. No sooner have they left the store than a gust of wind whips the white hat off his head and blows it into the river. Willie pulls the beret out of his back pocket and slips it back onto his head. Predictably, Bill is surprised to see the beret reappear, but he does nothing. Earlier, while Willie enconsed in the barber chair, Willie noticed that a cute little thing sitting opposite him is none other than Kitty King (Marion Byron of "Song of the West"), who attended the same college in Boston. These two try to get together, but their fathers refuse to countenance their relationship. John James King (Tom McGuire of "The Reckless Age") tells Kitty that he will pick the right man for her and the candidate will not be "the son of a river tramp." Similarly, Bill tells Willie that he will choose an appropriate mate for him and will not have a King for a daughter-in-law. Basically, Steamboat Bill and King are competitors in the paddle wheeler business on the Missisippi River. Recently, King brought in his brand new paddle wheeler and convinces the Public Safety Commissioner condemn the paddle wheeler--the Stonewall Jackson--that Bill owns. Bill goes after King, and King has him thrown in jail. The same day that the sheriff puts Bill in jail is the very day that Bill had arranged transport for Willie back to Boston. Willie sees the authorities take his father to calaboose and contrives a scheme to break him out. He conceals several tools inside a giant loaf of bread and convinces the sheriff to let him give it to his father. Initially, Bill wants nothing to do with Willie until his son shows him what the loaf contains. Bill breaks out, but Willie is caught. The sheriff cracks an unsuspecting Willie over the head with his six-gun and sends Canfield Junior off to the receiving hospital.

The major set-piece of "Steamboat Bill, Jr." is a high wind storm that tears up all the buildings in River Junction, blows the top off the hospital, and sends the jail into the river. The physical sight gags that Keaton performs are some of his best and most imitated. In one scene, the entire facade of a building falls on Willie, but he is standing where the window is so he is not hurt! Each gag is beautifully orchestrated by director Chas. F. Reisner who specialized in comedies, including the lesser Marx Brothers picture "The Big Store" and the Abbott & Costello comedy "Lost in a Harem." Even the smallest of gags, such as peanut hulls--which Bill refers to as "cocoanut shells"--that cut their bare feet up when they cross a floor are hilarious. The spectacle of Keaton clutching an uprooted tree that is hurled into the river is incredible as are the flying buildings that Buster runs into and out of. Of course, Willie and Kitty hook up in the end. Keaton performs all of his stunts and they are pretty amazing. "Steamboat Bill, Jr." ranks as a memorable Buster Keaton epic with several well-staged sight gags.

Don't miss this one.

FILM REVIEW OF ''LITTLE FOCKERS'' (2010)

After "Austin Powers" helmer Jay Roach made the first two Mike Myers retro-1960s spy spoofs, he made a completely different comedy "Meet the Parents" (2000) that spawned another profitable big-ticket franchise. Roach followed up the hilarious “Parents” with an even bigger and funnier sequel "Meet the Fockers" (2004) which coined nearly $300-million at the box office. These two lowest common denominator farces focused on the foul-ups that a WASP-Jewish couple made as they sought to accommodate their diametrically-opposite in-laws. The raunchy wit of Roach and his scribes and the terrific performances of Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller respectively as patriarch and prospective son-in-law fueled the humor. Now, Roach has handed “Little Fockers” (** out of ****) and the franchise over to "American Pie" director Paul Weitz. As talented as Weitz is, he lacks Roach's sense of humor. Indeed, Universal Studios had to negotiate with co-star Dustin Hoffman to retain his services for this largely lackluster sequel. Reportedly, Hoffman hated the soporific screenplay and lamented Roach's departure. Nevertheless, the “Rain Man” star showed up for six scenes. One major advantage of “Little Fockers” is that Universal lured back the original cast. You can always tell when a franchise is falling apart by the absence of original cast members. The filmmakers devote a large part of their 98 minute running time to the logistics of shuffling characters in and out of the complicated story, particularly the peripheral characters. Owen Wilson, Barbara Streisand, and Dustin Hoffman reappear, but they occupy strictly supporting roles.

Primarily, "Little Fockers" amounts to a fair-to-middling farce with a shortage of gross-out gags. Indeed, it pales by comparison with the zany original and the laugh riot sequel that featured a surfeit of infantile humor. The projectile vomit scene and the penile injection scene are the funniest scenes in this bland sequel. Sadly, "Meet the Fockers" suffers from one of its own comic plot devices--erectile-dysfunction--because it is hard-up for humor. “Meet the Parents” scenarist John Hamburg and newcomer Larry Stuckey spend more time on the complications than the comedy of errors. Predictably, they exploit the obscene-sounding surname of Ben Stiller's character for standard snickers. Meanwhile, they have contrived yet another lame confrontation between a straight-faced but scowling Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller's sympathetic but stumbling schlemiel. Mind you, De Niro and Stiller are still very good as mortal enemies.

The biggest difference between “Little Fockers” and the two earlier films is that Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller of “Tropic Thunder”) and Pam (Teri Polo of “The Beacon”) are married now and living in Chicago with twins, a daughter and son, Samantha (Daisy Tahan) and Henry (Colin Baiocchi), who are going to celebrate their fifth birthday. Gregg, as he prefers to be called, has landed an administrative position at a Chicago Hospital. This time around gimlet-eyed, former CIA agent Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro of “Taxi Driver”) tries to bust his son-in-law for an extramarital affair with Andi Garcia (Jessica Alba of “Machete”), a flirtatious prescription drug saleslady. She tools around in a red sports car with ‘Rx Grrrl’ on her license tag. Scenarists Hamburg and Stuckey are following up on the health-care minded lead of the recent Viagra comedy “Love and Other Drugs” with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway. Hamburg and Stuckey combine the erectile-dysfunction issue with Jack’s weak heart condition. The erectile-dysfunction medicine here is touted as user friendly for heart patients. Jack suffers a mild heart attack, but survives it by improvising his own defibrillation paddles. Meantime, the first time that drug rep Andi meets Gregg, she likes him. When an unhappy African-American patient protests about the way that Nurse Louis (Kevin Hart of “Soul Plane”) is giving him an enema, Andi snaps on the gloves happily to help and Gregg lends a hand. Everything that they say as they administer the enema is laden with sexual innuendo. Nurse Louis is grinning in the background, while the patient is swooning. Of course, Andi becomes infatuated with Gregg and wants him to serve as a spokesman for her company. Gregg and Pam, it seems, are living with Jack and Dina (Blythe Danner) because they are having their house renovated.

This part of “Little Fockers” dovetails with Gregg and Pam’s marriage. Gregg’s mom, therapist Roz Focker (Barbara Streisand), who hosts her own talk show “Sexpress Yourself,” discusses how child rearing often interferes with a couple’s sex life. Sometimes, she says, this complication drives the man to cheat. When Jack spots the samples of the erectile-dysfunction medicine "Sustengo" in a closet, he concludes that Gregg is up to something. Gregg wants to keep his business dealings with Andi a secret because he is trying to finance the remodeling of his suburban home, and he doesn’t want anybody to know where he is getting the money. Not surprisingly, Jack interprets things the wrong way. “Little Fockers” is basically another comedy of errors. Weitz and his scenarists bring Pam’s old flame, Kevin Rawley (Owen Wilson of “Marley and Me”) back into the action because Jack is having doubts that Gregg is best for Pam. Bernie (Dustin Hoffman) is off cavorting in Seville, Spain, learning how to dance the flamenco dance because it promotes sexual health.

This uninspired three-quel qualifies as a potboiler. The complications are basically Jack spying on Gregg again, and Gregg struggling to be a responsible breadwinner without confiding in Jack. Weitz and company tack on another ineffectual subplot about the Fockers enrolling the twins in an upper-scale kindergarten, the Early Human School, that isn‘t silly enough to be funny. Actress Laura Dern plays Prudence, the head mistress who interviews both the parents and children. Pam gets sick and cannot attend the tour day, so Gregg takes along ever inquisitive Jack. Naturally, Prudence leaps to the wrong conclusion that Gregg and Jack are a gay couple. Ironically, the title suggests that the twins will drive the story. Alas, the twins remain just as peripheral as Bernie, Roz, Kevin, and Dina. “Little Fockers” is too marginal to be anything but a rental.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE OTHER GUYS'' (2010)

“Saturday Night Live” comedian Will Ferrell has made a mint out of playing morons. He delivers another hilarious performance as a moronic New York Police Department detective in "Talladega Nights” director Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys,” (** out of ****) an ambitious but half-baked parody of slam-bang police thrillers. Oscar nominated actor Mark Wahlberg of “The Departed” co-stars as Ferrell’s pugnacious NYPD partner. Unfortunately, Wahlberg displays none of Ferrell’s comic genius. Indeed, nothing Wahlberg does registers as remotely amusing. He is either screaming at Ferrell or skewering his partner’s masculinity. Wahlberg appears to be channeling Joe Pesci from the Martin Scorsese classics “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Alas, Wahlberg is no Pesci. The funniest thing next to Ferrell is the non-stop ridicule reserved for our hero’s red Prius. Incredibly, the car is far funnier than Wahlberg. McKay and “Land of the Lost” scenarist Chris Henchy struggle with little success to combine a formulaic buddy picture comedy with a complex white-collar crime conspiracy about a shady investment banker. Nevertheless, anything Ferrell does will keep you in stitches, but all Wahlberg’s scenes should have hit the editing room floor. Think of “The Other Guys” as a mediocre “Police Academy” knock-off with half of the laughs. Primarily, the humor grows out of the irony that two pencil-pushing desk jockeys wind up replacing two loose-cannon celebrity crime busters as the top cops in the Big Apple. The stunt work is terrific. The opening gag where a heroic pair of testosterone-driven cops smash their sports car through a double-decker bus to arrest two shooters for a misdemeanor amount of narcotics is impressive. Again, McKay and Henchy make some poor narrative choices. First, they kill off the two most charismatic characters, Highsmith and Danson, in the first quarter hour. Second, they replace them with two colorless morons. Our heroes qualify as genuine underdogs. Third, McKay and Henchy never provide a solid, colorful villain. The villainous chores are split between a the harmless investment banker and an antagonist Australian troubleshooter. You cannot spoof a genre, like crime movies, unless you follow the dictates of the genre. Since there is no central villain, our heroes have it pretty easy. The closest character to a villain turns out to be their own police captain. Mind you, "The Other Guys" isn't even an adequate parody. Some of the jokes on the side shine, like Dirty Mike and his homeless crew that have an orgy in our hero's car.

NYPD Detectives P.K. Highsmith (Samuel L. Jackson of “Pulp Fiction”) and Christopher Danson (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson of “The Tooth Fairy”) are a macho pair of “Lethal Weapon” cops who refuse to let details complicate their roguish antics. Although they make spectacular arrests, they also create equally spectacular property damage. Nevertheless, everybody loves them so they can flout the rules without fear of repercussion. As “The Other Guys” opens, Highsmith and Danson are chasing a gang armed with assault weapons. Danson has gotten atop their Escalade, but he isn’t there long after they shoot up the roof. Danson dives back onto Highsmith’s car, rolls off the hood onto the roof, and swings into the front seat. The villains blast Highsmith’s car so the hood folds back against the windshield and blinds them. Highsmith shoots off the hood hinge. Too late! He plows into a double-decker bus as the villains appear to get away. Danson commandeers the double-decker bus with Highsmith’s car still stuck in it. Danson careens after the hoods, whips the double-decker around, launching Highsmith’s car with Highsmith blasting away with two pistols at the hoods. Highsmith takes them down, shoots the gas tank of their Escalade, and soars over the explosion, crashing into the building. After Highsmith and Danson receive their medals, Precinct Captain Gene Mauch (Michael Keaton of “Batman”) calls on somebody to complete their paper work. These two cops have never wasted their time with paperwork. Detective Allen Gamble snaps at the opportunity to complete the Highsmith and Danson paperwork. Not long afterward, Highsmith and Danson leap to their deaths when they try to thwart a team of acrobats who wield a wrecking ball to smash their way into a jewelry store and heist $79-thousand in stones.

A milquetoast forensic accountant who prefers to file paperwork, Gamble (Will Ferrell of “Old School”) likes to hum the S.W.A.T. theme and stay in the precinct office rather than nab the bad guys on the streets. His idea of busting loose is to floor the gas pedal of his Prius and play the Little River Band. Allen’s partner, Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg of “Date Night”), is just the opposite. Terry dreams of making the big bust. He suspects drug deals behind every crime. Sadly, Terry has been confined to a desk and stuck with Allen. The skeleton in Terry’s closet is he accidentally shot New York Yankees baseball slugger Derek Jeter in the leg during the seventh game of the World Series. Yes, the Yankees lost! Everybody in the precinct now calls Terry ‘the Yankee Clipper.’ Naturally, Terry hates Allen, but he lives by the venerable “partner’s code,” a police maxim that requires a partner to back up his partner no matter what the circumstance. Ironically, Allen’s obsession with paper work prompts them to arrest British investment banker Sir David Ershon (Steve Coogan of “Tropic Thunder”) who is up to his neck in a grand scheme to steal $32-billion from the NYPD Pension Fund to cover the loses of another Wall Street titan.

The best scene between Ferrell and Wahlberg is the lion-versus-the-tuna tale. Terry tells Allen that he would rip him to shreds as easily as a lion could a tuna. Terry destroys the lack of logic in Terry’s example with own flawed logic. He claims that the tuna would construct an oxygen apparatus to allow them to live out of water so they could stalk and attack lions on dry land. The running joke throughout “The Other Guys” is that nerdy Allen is a babe magnet. Sexy chicks come on to him but ignore Terry. At one point, Allen and Terry have to interview one of Allen’s old girlfriends to get message that was ghost-messaged from Allen’s cell phone to her cell phone. Again, Terry is flabbergasted by Allen’s sexy ex-girlfriend. Terry is floored when he finally meets Allen’s hot chick wife, Dr. Shelia Gamble (Eva Mendez of “Training Day”), who is crazy about her husband. Allen and Shelia met while he was in college acting as a pimp for some of his girlfriends. Allen assured Terry that his pimping days were dark days indeed because he became a different person nicknamed ‘Gator.’ “The Other Guys” swerves erratically between scenes of Allen and Terry bonding to the chaos that they create when they arrest Ershon. The “Grand Theft Auto” chases, the blazing gunfights, and the audacious wrecking ball jewelry heist accent look cool but these scenes seem out of place in a screwy buddy comedy. Ultimately, the PG-13 rated "Other Guys” runs out of momentum and laughs long before it runs out of plot.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE BOUNTY HUNTER" (2010)

"The Bounty Hunter" (* out of ****) is not a rewarding experience. This lightweight but disposable comedy of errors about a grumpy bail bondsman up to his ears in gambling debts who must track down his investigative journalist ex-wife and take her into custody for bumping an NYPD police horse lacks momentum, coherence, and surprises. Indeed, the two leads--gorgeous blond Jennifer Aniston and rugged unshaven Gerard Butler--radiate more than enough physical chemistry, but a lackluster script lets them down. "Hitch" director Andy Tennant and "See Jane Run" scenarist Sarah Thorp have created an interesting premise packed with irony, but they blew it by having our attractive leads bicker with each other more often bash the bad guys in this lolly-gagging 110 minute misfire. Although it struggles to combine comedy with suspense as hilariously as both the Robert De Niro & Charles Grodin bounty hunting comedy "Midnight Run" (1988) and the witty Clint Eastwood & Bernadette Peters saga "Pink Cadillac" (1989) did, "The Bounty Hunter" rarely succeeds with either comedy or suspense. Nothing adds up here in this artificial romance about a divorced couple who rediscover their affection for each other.

New York Daily Times investigative reporter Nicole Hurley (Jennifer Aniston of "Marley & Me")receives a tip that a NYPD cop who leaped off a rooftop may not have committed suicide. Meanwhile, she ignores a summons to appear in court and pursues a red hot lead that may land her a scoop about the cop's mysterious death as well as police corruption. Nicole ditches her court date when her informant, Jimmy (Adam Rose of "The Squid and the Whale"), calls her up frantically as she is about to set foot in the courthouse and demands $500 with the story of a lifetime. Before our heroine can reach Jimmy, a trigger-happy thug with a gun, Mahler (Peter Greene of "Pulp Fiction"), abducts him in broad daylight. Back at the courthouse, the irate judge (Lynda Gravatt of "Landlocked") issues a bench warrant for Nicole's arrest. Ironically, former NYPD Detective Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler of "300") is pleading for more jobs when his boss Sid (Jeff Garlin of "RoboCop 3") hands him the task of hauling his ex-spouse to the hoosegow. Sid wonders if he is making the right decision when Milo reacts with ecstatic joy. Nicole and he were married for all of nine months before they got a divorce. Nicole's career soared as a result of their divorce, while Milo's career went down the crapper.

Simultaneously, Milo has been dodging two tenacious debt collectors. He owes them approximately $11-thousand dollars and needs the dough from Nicole's bond to pay them off. Naturally, when he cannot find Nicole, Milo contacts his former mother-in-law, a loony Atlantic City lounge singer, Kitty Hurley (Christine Baranski of "Mamma Mia!"), who sends him off to a nearby racetrack. Nicole, it seems, believes that she can take advantage of all the good luck that abandons other people at the racetrack to help her in her quest. Nicole's bubble bursts when Milo shows up and stuffs her unceremoniously into the trunk of a powder-blue limo. Inevitably, this leads to a succession of Nicole escaping from Milo and Milo recapturing her before our hero finally encounters Mahler. Not only does the murderous Mahler sideswipe Milo's car to get at Nicole, but he also exchanges gunfire with Milo. Milo starts taking Nicole seriously, especially when she implicates his former NYPD detective partner Bobby (Dorian Missick of "Rachel Getting Married") as a dirty cop. Naturally, Milo refuses to believe that Bobby, who gave Nicole away to him at their wedding, could be involved in corruption of any kind.

An array of harebrained supporting characters does nothing to supplement the humor in "The Bounty Hunter," except to make it seem even more labored. First, Irene (Cathy Moriarty of "Raging Bull") dispatches two incompetent morons to collect the big bucks that Milo owes her. Neither nitwit has any success, however, at recouping Irene's dough. Second, rather than nabbing Milo, they mistake an idiotic New York Daily News reporter, Stewart (Jason Sudeikis of "The Rocker"), for Milo. Stewart desperately wants to team up with Nicole on the suicide story. Nicole refuses to have anything to do with Stewart, but he stubbornly declines to take no for an answer. Repeatedly, Nicole turns Stewart down every time that he pleads to collaborate with her. Eventually, Stewart ends up following Milo around so that he can contact Nicole. At one point, Stewart checks the trunk of Milo's car because he thinks that Milo may still have Nicole stashed in it. One of the debt collectors traces Milo's car. When he sees Stewart tampering with the trunk, he assumes that Stewart is Milo. Nothing that Stewart can say persuades the debt collector to let him go. Instead, the debt collector brings Stewart back so Irene can torture him. Irene and company go to work on Stewart before they discover that they are breaking the wrong guy's legs! This exasperating routine turns into a running gag that lacks humor. Eventually, Irene and her henchmen realize that they have made a terrible mistake. Consequently, they call in a racetrack physician who brandishes a giant syringe filled with horse tranquilizer to alleviate Stewart's pain. Unfortunately, this subplot generates little humor, largely because Stewart gets what he deserves for behaving like such an obnoxious lout.

Predictably, everything works out for our heroic couple, but the story is so incoherent and humorless that you don't care what happens to them, or for that matter Stewart in this lackluster opposites-attract-romantic-comedy-thriller.

FILM REVIEW OF ''COP OUT'' (2010)

This uninspired police procedural comedy of errors from "Clerks" director Kevin Smith and TV scribes Robb & Mark Cullen teams action icon Bruce Willis up with "30 Rock" comic Tracy Morgan as two N.Y.P.D. homicide detectives who tangle with a gang of trigger-happy Hispanic drug dealers. Smith's previous comedies were coarse, loquacious, low-budget efforts about losers on the fringes of society. As classic as "Clerks," "Dogma," "Chasing Amy," and "Zack and Miri Make a Porno" are, these imaginative but niche comedies never scored big bucks at the box office, so Smith decided to helm a formulaic genre piece that he knew his father would appreciate. Interestingly enough, Smith didn't pen the screenplay as he usually does, but the film bears visages of his irreverent humor. "Cop Out" (** OUT OF ****) qualifies as a predictable mainstream law & order thriller that delivers fewer thrills than it does gags. The marginal humor is at times crude, especially an interrogation room scene, but you won't find yourself laughing out loud at some of the jokes that Smith's usual characters, Jay and Silent Bob, would crack or pranks that they would perform for their gross-out hilarity. Half-comic and half-dramatic, this 107-minute, R-rated feature lacks memorable characters in memorable predicaments. Reportedly, "Cop Out" is a homage to 1980s' cop movies with the stereotypically intolerant captain who complains to his overzealous underlings about their questionable actions. Another allusion to 1980s cop movies is the charismatic but hardly classic Harold Faltermeyer synthesized score that the composer of "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop" came out of retirement to contribute to this undistinguished opus.

Detective Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis of "Die Hard") and Detective Paul Hodges (Tray Morgan of "The Longest Yard") have been partners for nine years. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine who would tolerate an idiot like Paul. During the questioning of a suspect at the outset, Paul enters the interrogation room and tries to masquerade as a crazed gunman. A peanut gallery of spectators on the other side of the interrogation room window chuckle as Paul struggles to get the suspect to open up. Jimmy shakes his head incredulously as Paul quotes movie dialogue in his tough guy act to loosen the suspect's tongue. Surprisingly, Paul's lunatic performance succeeds, and the suspect spills the beans about Latin drug dealers. Our heroes stake-out the suspect's cell phone store. Unfortunately, not only does the Latino ice the suspect with a submachine gun, but also he eludes our heroes so that they look like amateurs. Predictably, Captain Romans (Sean Cullen of "Cop Land") chews them out because they lost the suspect and shot-up the neighborhood. Moreover, Romans suspends both Jimmy and Paul, because their slipshod antics fouled up two of their fellow detectives, Hunsaker (Kevin Pollak of "Deterrence") and Barry Mangold (Adam Brody of "Jennifer's Body"), who were investigating the Hispanics.

Captain Romans' suspension could not have come at a worse time for our protagonist. Jimmy learns that his daughter, Ava (Michelle Trachtenberg of "17 Again"), wants a dream wedding and her stepfather Roy (Jason Lee of "Dogma") wants to foot the $48-thousand dollar wedding if Jimmy cannot pay for it. Jimmy insists on paying for it. He decides to sell a collectible baseball card of National League player Andy Pafko that is worth of bundle. Jimmy takes the baseball card to a dealer, but he loses it when a light-on-his-feet thief, Dave (Seann William Scott of "Role Models"), knocks Jimmy down with a tazer during a daylight robbery and pinches the card. Ironically, Paul is standing out front the entire time jabbering on his cell phone with his wife without the slightest idea what is happening inside the store.

Meanwhile, an ambitious Spanish drug dealer decides to take over some new territory. The baseball card thief sells Jimmy's card to this murderous Mexican (Guillermo Diaz of "The Virgin of Juarez") who is obsessed with baseball memorabilia. Poh-Boy--as he is called--has a BMW that thieves have stolen out from under the noses of his henchmen. Poh-Boy agrees to fork over the baseball card if Jimmy and Paul can get his car back. Several people get shot along the way, but Smith doesn't wallow in blood & gore the way a real 1980s movie would have. Indeed, "Cop Out" is no white-knuckled, "Lethal Weapon" type, high-octane cop saga. Kevin Pollak and Adam Brody are okay as the second-string pair of sartorial cops that shadow our heroes. The only decent gag that Smith handles with finesse concerns Paul's jealous behavior about his gorgeous wife. Paul suspects that his sexy spouse, Debbie (Rashida Jones of "I Love You, Man") is having an affair with a hot young stud next door so he puts a teddy bear with a nanny cam in their bedroom to monitor her.

Basically, Willis and Morgan kindle little chemistry with their sophomoric shenanigans. They walk through this lackluster shoot'em up with Willis as the gruff, seasoned partner who doesn't need a moron like Paul. Paul cannot say homage right and Smith milks this joke far beyond its use. The death of Poh-Boy detracts from his overall villainous stature because our heroes eliminate him with far too much ease. The plot really gets wacky when Jimmy bails out Dave, the baseball card thief, and sends him into Poh-Boy's house to recover his card. The usually agile thief slips and knocks himself out cold, so cold in fact that our heroes believe that he is dead. This set-up provides the best joke that Smith plays out during the end credits. "Cop Out" conjures up forgettable characters, forgettable situations, and consistently forgettable gags.

FILM REVIEW OF ''EXCESS BAGGAGE'' (1997)

Actress Alicia Silverstone’s latest starring vehicle “Excess Baggage” (** OUT OF ****) opens amid a frenzy of activity like an inspired screwball comedy. Midway through the movie director Marco Brambilla and his scribes flagrantly shift gears from a sparkling comedy to a tedious kidnapping drama about an unhappy heiress and a woebegone car thief. Fans of the “Clueless” starlet may find “Excess Baggage” a puzzling departure for Silverstone who wielded ultimate creative authority over both script and casting. Perhaps she is more to blame for the muddled quality of “Excess Baggage” than either Brambilla or the writers. Never as entertaining as “Clueless” but better than “Batman & Robin,” “Excess Baggage" arrives as something of a letdown after Silverstone’s long screen absence.

Cast as Emily T. Hope, the moody daughter of a man richer than Donald Trump, Silverstone constantly struggles to elicit her icy hearted, corporate father’s affections. Australian actor Jack (“‘Breaker’ Morant”) Thompson plays the father who has grown weary of his daughter’s outlandish schemes to attract his attention. When he sent her away to a boarding school, Emily torched the place. As “Excess Baggage” unfolds, she has convinced not only her father but also the FBI that kidnappers are holding her for a million dollar ransom. Lamely, Emily hopes that her rescue from her bogus kidnappers will rekindle her papa’s love. So she gags, tapes and cuffs herself before she jumps into the trunk (not a stunt you should try) of her BMW.

Just as it looks as if everything is going Emily’s way, a car thief spots her Beamer in a parking garage and steals it as she lies helpless in the trunk. No sooner does Vincent (Benicio Del Toro) wheel his latest trophy onto the street than a swarm of police cars descends on him. A tire-screeching chase ensues, and Vincent manages to shake his pursuers. He pulls into a nondescript warehouse that conceals his stolen vehicles. Vincent is an expert car thief who boosts expensive sports cars. When he puts the car on the rack, he notices that it wobbles. Imagine his shock when he finds a babe chick inside bound and gagged. Vincent slams the trunk! Since he cannot think of anything else, he calls his partner-in-crime Greg (Harry Connick, Jr), a car salesman. So far the story has a little in common with the Elizabeth Shue comedy “Adventures in Babysitting.”

Meanwhile, Emily’s suspicious father calls in his right hand man, Uncle Ray (Christopher Walken) to find his daughter. After Emily breaks out of the car, she calls pop, but hangs up when Vincent returns. Eventually, Vincent decides to leave her on foot far out in the forest. That’s when he discovers her identity and that his car warehouse stands in a pile of smoking ashes. Now, the guys who paid Vincent to steal the cars (Nicholas Turturro & Michael Bowen) want their $200-thousand dollars back. Spotting Emily, they pull guns on Vincent and take Emily hostage with a million dollar ransom demand. It seems that “Excess Baggage” is a series of kidnappings and abductions.

The inventive but offbeat script hangs together by the most improbable threads. Of course, that’s the nature of Hollywood movies. The more unlikely the circumstances are, the more colossal the dramatic outcome appears. Anyway, whoever thought to demand realism out of an Alicia Silverstone comedy? Suddenly, “Excess Baggage” wanders off on other subplots that distract from Vincent and Emily. Not only that but the story slows down and a pall hovers over the characters. Realism tries to intrude on an Alicia Silverstone movie. Oh, no, not another Silverstone turkey like “The Crush!”

Screwball comedy dictates that Vincent heists the same car that Emily uses to stash her body. A smoldering cigarette that she tosses into a rag bin later engulfs Vincent’s neat hideout in flames. Neither Vincent nor Emily appreciate their predicament. Just when Vincent rids himself of Emily, he needs her and she needs him. Later, when Ray captures Vincent and confiscates his money, Emily comes to his rescue. Less than amused, the gruff Ray explains to Emily that she has committed a serious crime. They need to use Vincent as the fall guy to take her place.

“Clueless” it ain’t. Director Marco Brambilla, whose only previous directing credit is Sly Stallone’s “Demolition Man,” whips these disparate elements together with such verve and style until Emily and Vincent team up. The action stalls out along with the humor and movie goes in search of a genre. Is this still a comedy? Or is it a social problem film? About the same time that the story loses its momentum, we learn what an insensitive brute her father truly is. Jack Thompson’s stuck-up dad feels absolutely no sympathy for his daughter and finds a business appointment infinitely preferable to her attentions.

Writer Max D. Adams and comedy veterans Dick Clement and Ian Frenais fumble in their efforts to maintain a consistent feeling and atmosphere in the story. After Emily and Vincent fall for each other, Alicia Silverstone’s character spends several scenes off-camera. We get to follow the misadventures of poor Vincent who gets kidnapped not only by Ray but his criminal cronies. The focus shifts from the burgeoning relationship between Emily and Vincent and settles on the mechanics of a crime thriller. There’s even a shoot-out at the end, and Alicia drives a forklift with the front end of a car on it through a wall. The filmmakers clearly lose interest in their characters when they let the leads take a back seat to the crazy twists and turns of the plot. But the ending isn’t so neat. Emily’s father couldn’t care two bits for his daughter and wings it off to a business conference.

If anybody holds this uneven caper together it’s star and producer Alicia Silverstone. Although she is looking a little fleshy around the curves, Silverstone’s china-doll eyes and her crooked smile are all the charisma this movie should have needed. The amazing thing is that Silverstone allows her character to be shuttled off-camera, something that rarely happened in “Clueless.” Successful starlets on the rise in Hollywood usually hog the camera lens, but Silverstone doesn’t mind letting her co-stars carry entire scenes without her. As a motherless daughter, Emily enlists our sympathy. She’s a poor misguided girl, but at the same time a rather smart cookie with a black belt in karate. Silverstone brings his gorgeous physical presence to bear in the role without shedding her clothes. In fact, you can count her wardrobe changes on one hand and have leftover fingers.

Silverstone’s scenes with co-star Benicio Del Toro are the best thing about “Excess Baggage.” The wiry Del Toro creates a character so much Emily’s opposite that you know they will hook up. A gifted actor in his own right, Benicio Del Toro got his start as a Bond villain in 1989’s “License to Kill” and played one of Robert De Niro’s victims in “The Fan.” Del Toro never gives the same performance twice. He speaks with a raspy voice here and varies the pulse of his performance from his co-star. The comedy and chemistry that develop between them is so dry that it radiates humor. In one scene, while she yammers away at him, he observes that he once stole a car with a puppy in the back seat that made less noise.

Christopher Walken is cast as Emily’s lethal Uncle Ray. Walken’s performance brims with uncertainty. Like he needed the director to remind him how villainous he was allowed to be. For a while, the writers act like they aren’t sure whose side Ray in on in the story.

If you like Alicia Silverstone, you’ll probably buy “Excess Baggage” not matter how flakey its premise, execution, and outcome is.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE GOODS: LIVE HARD, SELL HARD" (2009)

Freshman director Neal Brennan’s glib, irreverent, R-rated comedy “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard” (* out of ****) qualifies as a clunker that delivers little but lame laughs about an arrogant used car liquidator. Nothing in this contrived comedy is a tenth as side-splitting as Robert Zemeckis’ supremely silly saga “Used Cars” (1980) that co-starred Kurt Russell and Jack Warden. “Talladega Nights” producers Adam McKay and Will Ferrell along with first-time scenarists Andy Stock and Rick Stempson sink their first-rate cast with nothing but stinking jokes and crude routines that flatten on impact. Nevertheless, Jeremy Piven, Ving Rhames, David Koechner, Kathryn Hahn, James Brolin and Charles Napier humble and humiliate themselves without a qualm. Napier is especially militant as a chauvinistic, foul-mouthed World War II veteran, while James Brolin’s masquerade as tired hubby gone gay who hits on straight guy David Koechner is more inept than funny.

You know you’re in trouble when the best gag in the movie has an Asian-American car salesman accepting an official bank money bag as payment for the vehicle as the customer swerves off the lot. No sooner does the salesman pop open the bag than blue paint from a canister inside blinds him. As he staggers away, he shrieks, “I feel like I just got jizzed by a smurf.” The next best joke has Piven quizzing an unsuspecting person with: “How much did the polar bear weigh?” As the puzzled respondent shrugs, Piven replies, “Enough to break the ice.” This gag gives him the opportunity to introduce himself.

Don Ready (Jeremy Piven of HBO’s “The Entourage”) makes his living selling cars that nobody else could pawn. He has been selling autos since he was a kid. He knew that he had the knack when he sold his hippity-hop ball with designer handles to another neighborhood kid for the latter’s deluxe, low-riding, plastic tricycle with streamers sprouting from the handle bars. Since then Don has been selling and he hasn’t looked back. Don has assembled an A-Team of used car sales people that include Jibby Newsome (Ving Rhames of “Pulp Fiction”), Brent Gage (David Koechner of “The Comebacks”), and Babs Merrick (Kathryn Hahn of “Stepbrothers”) who can clear car lots with their questionable tactics.

Don receives a call from Benjamin K. Selleck (James Brolin of “The Amityville Horror”) who is about to lose his family-owned used car lot to the bank. When our heroes arrive in the small California town of Temecula, Don mobilizes the local strippers, hires an obnoxious dee-jay, DJ Request (Craig Robinson of “The Pineapple Express”), who refuses to play anything that anybody requests, plants a gigantic inflatable gorilla atop the dealership, and a schedules appearance from the brother of a celebrity vocalist. They have to sell around 200 cars during the July fourth weekend. Matters are complicated somewhat by Selleck’s family, particularly his daughter, Ivy Selleck (Jordana Spiro of “From Dusk Till Dawn 3”), who is dating another car dealer in town, Paxton Harding (Ed Helms of “The Hangover”). In fact, she is Paxton’s fiancée, but this doesn’t dissuade Don from going after her and likewise. Meanwhile, Paxton’s father Stu Harding (Alan Thicke of “Alpha Dog”) wants to buy Selleck Motors so that his son can have a place to rehearse for his boy band. Don persuades Selleck not to sell, even promising him a night in the sack with Brent. Of course, Brent is happy with the prospect of such a rendezvous.

Meanwhile, Don and Ivy hit it off and she wants to learn more about him. Like most movie heroes, Don has a skeleton in his closet and he hasn’t exorcised this demon. Don lost one of his best salesmen, McDermott (Will Ferrell), during a car stunt gone wrong. McDermott dived out of a plane dressed like Abraham Lincoln and when he pulled the ripcord to his parachute, dildos flew out. Meanwhile, on the ground in the back of a car, Don is having sex with a woman in the back seat when he discovers that he has the parachute. McDermott dies and Don still feels the guilt. Eventually, Don and the ghost of McDermott with two female African-American vocalists in robes visit him and they straighten everything out.

Meanwhile, Don has abandoned his team because he feels so guilty about McDermott, but Selleck’s sales staff pulls together and they manage to sell every car on the lot, except for a sports car that was one of the many used on the “Smoky and the Bandit” movie that Selleck managed to acquire. Stu and Paxton come to take the keys to the car lot because the sports car is still on the lot. By this time, Don has gotten back and he manages to sell the vehicle to Paxton after he convinces him that he can use it as a prop in his boy band act. At the same time, another subplot concerns one of Selleck’s car dealers, Blake (Vince Vaughn look-alike Jonathan Sadowski of the new “Friday the 13th”) whose father left his mother and she had to raise him alone. Blake’s moves after he makes a successful car sale are an exact imitation of Don’s moves. Furthermore, Don hasn’t been in Temecula in for more than 20 years and Blake is 21, so Don imagines that Blake is his son. As it turns out, Blake isn’t his son, but that doesn’t keep Don from adopting him when he marries Ivy at the conclusion of “The Goods.” The epilogue informs us that Don and Ivy split up after two years and Blake moved on. While all this is going on, Babs has the hots for Selleck’s 10-year old son Peter Selleck (Rob Riggle of “The Hangover”) who has a pituitary gland problem so that he looks like a 30-year old man with a 10-year old trapped in his body. Babs stops selling cars and goes to work at a boys counseling school where Peter is set to enroll.

If this description of the plot doesn’t dissuade you from wasting your time on “The Goods,” then you may actually like this numbskull comedy.

FILM REVIEW OF ''INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS" (2009)

“Pulp Fiction” director Quentin Tarantino has taken Italian filmmaker Enzo G. Castellari's cult World War II thriller “Inglorious Bastards” (1978) and reimagined it as a cinematic atrocity entitled “Inglourious Basterds.” Castellari’s riveting mission-behind-enemy-lines thriller about a group of court-martialed Allied deserters led by Bo Svenson and Fred Williamson qualified as an electrifying actioneer with charismatic characters and several surprises. Tarantino’s tasteless tale not only lacks charismatic characters but it also boasts no surprises.

A bombastic piece of wartime crap containing Brad Pitt’s worst performance, “Inglourious Basterds”(* out of ****)--with its deliberately misspelled title--is as appalling as Sasha Baron Cohen’s homophobic movie “Bruno.” Hopelessly pretentious with its tactless Jewish revenge plot, this polished looking pabulum takes its own sweet time unfolding at a torturous two hours and thirty-three minutes. Garrulous dialogue scenes, erratic characters and a convoluted plot that all defy good taste much less credibility undermine what might have been a good movie.

Initially, the action—which Tarantino breaks into five chapters--opens during 1941 in the scenic French countryside. Unctuous Nazi "Jew Hunter" Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz of “GoldenEye”) arrives at a farm house with several German soldiers and questions the owner, Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet of “Hannibal Rising”), about Jews. Landa succeeds so well at ingratiating himself with LaPadite that the poor Frenchman breaks down and exposes the helpless Jewish family holed up in his basement. The Nazis turn the basement into Swiss cheese with fusillades of machine gun fire. Miraculously, as only miracles in a movie can happen, one of the Jews, a young woman, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent of “Snowboarder”), manages to escape.

In the next scene, U.S. Army Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt of “Ocean’s Thirteen”) assembles a team of Jewish Americans to infiltrate enemy lines and slaughter as many Nazis as possible. In fact, Raine demands that Sergeant Donny Donowitz (“Hostel” director Eli Roth), Private Smithson Utivich (B.J. Novak of TV’s “The Office”), Private Omar Ulmer (Omar Doom of “Death Proof”), Private Gerold Hirschberg (Samm Levine of “Club Dread”), Private Andy Kagan (Paul Rust of “Semi-Pro”), and Private Michael Zimmerman (Michael Bacall of “Undertow”) take 100 Nazi scalps. So much for the time-honored Geneva Convention!

In the next scene, Adolph Hitler (Martin Wuttke) clamors that their troops must stop talking about the “Bear Jew.” The Fuehrer rants that the nickname German soldiers have saddled Sergeant Donowitz with is undermining Nazi morale. Indeed, Donowitz wields a baseball bat with ghoulish gusto. In one scene, he takes sadistic pleasure in smashing the skull of a Nazi soldier with a Louisville slugger. Moreover, Raine and his ‘Holocaust’ dogs display no qualms in scalping dead Nazis. When Tarantino isn’t showing Americans carving the scalps off the fallen enemy, he has them slashing swastikas in the foreheads of live prisoners.

Our psychopathic heroes have even gone so far as to rescue a renegade Nazi, Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger of “Driven”), who has acquired a notorious reputation as a serial killer among his own ranks. Mind you, “Inglourious Basterds” is too comically cretinous to distinguish between good Germans and bad Nazis. Like the politically incorrect cavalry westerns of yesteryear, the only good Germans in “Inglourious Basterds” are a dead Germans.

Three years have elapsed since Shosanna eluded Colonel Landa. She resides now in Paris and owns a cinema. A lonely Nazi soldier, Frederick Zoller (Christopher Reeve lookalike Daniel Brühl of “The Bourne Ultimatum”), befriends her. Shosanna doesn’t know Zoller is a war hero. Singlehandedly, he shot over 200 American G.I.s dead from his sniper’s lair atop a bell tower. Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth of “Stalingrad”) has produced a movie about Zoller’s exploits with Zoller playing himself. Moreover, Goebbels plans to premiere this epic in Paris for the high-ranking Nazi elite. Among those scheduled to attend are Hitler, Martin Bormann, Reich Marshal Hermann Göring, and famous German actor Emil Jannings. Of course, when Goebbels imposes on Shosanna to show the movie, she has no alternative. She does, however, have quite a barbecue cooked up for the cream of the Third Reich.

Meantime, British Intelligence General Ed Fenech (Michael Meyers of the “Austin Powers” movies) and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor of “The Time Machine”) have concocted their own secret mission. They plan to send British Lieutenant Arch Hicox (Daniel Day-Lewis lookalike Michael Fassbender of “300”) behind enemy lines to masquerade as a Nazi. He will accompany one of their most trusted double-agents, German film starlet Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger of the “National Treasure” movies) to the film premiere. Unfortunately, things go awry for Hicox and Bridget before they can rendezvous with Raine. They encounter a suspicious Gestapo officer in a basement tavern and a massacre ensues that nearly scuttles the mission.

Evidently, the last thing Tarantino wanted to make was a patriotic World War II movie. Instead, he has tweaked history so that “Inglourious Basterds” amounts to a revisionist Holocaust fantasy of far-fetched proportions. It is one thing to ridicule the Nazis as supremely stupid swine, but quite another to depict Americans as murderous morons. Colonel Landa’s outlandish incompetence at the premiere where he thwarts one plot but wholly overlooks another is hilariously awful. Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine, a clownish Tennessee hillbilly with an ersatz Jethro Bodine drawl, is Tarantino’s homage to late B-movie hunk Aldo Ray. Actually, Ray starred in the Italian WWII thriller “Suicide Commandos.” Pitt plays the leader of this nasty little band of scalphunters without a shred of subtlety. Indeed, “Inglourious Basterds” is about as subtle as a baseball bat to the brains. The only thing Tarantino forgot to do was dress his Jewish-American commandos up in grease paint, wigs, and phony accents like the Marx Brothers.

FILM REVIEW OF "UNDISCOVERED" (2005)

“Far From Home” director Meiert Avis’ romantic musical comedy “Undiscovered” (*** out of ****)is a sweetly sentimental fairy tale saga about the obstacle course that young lovers run in their relationships. Lurking within this deceptively lightweight movie is a message about fame versus creativity. People sell their souls for fame, but fame is only the foam, whereas creativity is the bedrock for everything in life. A confused but sympathetic model suffering from love trouble with her cheating rock star boyfriend and an aspiring songwriter collide entirely by accident when a New York subway train disgorges its passengers. She catches one of his gloves on the way onto the train while he stands transfixed on the platform watching her slip away on the departing train. Later, each winds up moving to glittering Los Angeles. He wants to break into the musical scene, while she wants to get into acting. Ostensibly, newcomer John Galt has penned a screenplay that consists of 98 minutes of PG-13 rated soap opera galore not only about the perils of love but also the mercurial music business. Initially, I thought “Undiscovered” little more than a potboiler about twentysomething love (which it is to a certain degree) until I caught it the second time around and discovered its deeper ‘undiscovered’ values. The cast is first-rate with Pell James and Steven Strait making this love story entirely tolerable because of their sincere, soft-spoken performance. Avis displays the right balance that keeps “Undiscovered” from curdling into syrupy sap.

Slinky model Brier Tucket (Pell James of “Broken Flowers”) is boarding the subway when she runs into two brothers, the younger one Luke Falcon (Steven Strait of “Covenant”) and the older one Euan Falcon (Kip Pardue of “Driven”) and she accidentally snags Luke’s glove as they pass. Immediately, Luke realizes that he has allowed the best thing in his life get away from him. Luke gushes to Euan about her as the prettiest girl that he has ever seen, while Euan complains about his brother losing the gloves that he borrowed from him. Brier ponders if it was destiny that Luke and she met or was it simply random chance. She carries on endless conversations with Carrie (Carrie Fisher of “Star Wars”) on the phone about Luke. Eventually, a couple of years afterward, Brier decides that she would like to take a stab at acting. Out in Los Angeles, Brier meets up with another aspiring actress/singer Clea (Ashlee Simpson) in her acting class who treats Luke like a brother and sometimes accompanies him on a song. Luke barely makes ends meet for a while, working at the local humane shelter and later at a yogurt shop. He enjoys himself the most singing and playing music at nightspots around L.A. and has a trained bulldog that rides a skateboard. Actually, the bulldog is the funniest things about this movie.

The screenplay is all about girl meets guy, girl wants guy, but girl has been screwed over by a previous guy and she cannot handle getting screwed over again. Mind you, Luke is obsessed by Brier. Brier and her rock star boyfriend Mick (Stephen Moyer of HBO’s “True Blood”) conclude their long-distance love affair because he loves to cheat on her. Sadly, Brier is the worst for the wear and tear on the soul that she has been exposed to by the horny British rocker. When she meets Luke, she likes him, but she fears their fling will turn into another bittersweet bust. She need not have worried because Luke really doesn’t want to be a rocker. Luke reminds Brier constantly about his aspirations and informs her at one point that he is a one-gal guy. Mick, however, has made Brier skeptical about men in general. Nevertheless, Luke intrigues her enough so that well-intentioned Clea and she, with Carrie’s help, bolster his career. They turn Luke into him a sudden, overnight sensation that brings out the worst in the music business. Namely, Tantra records honcho Garrett Schweck (Fisher Stevens of “Reversal of Fortune”) signs Luke to a contract. Actually, all the hoopla on the Internet that Clea and Brier generated along with their acting friends posing as music executives fooled the opportunistic Garrett into signing Luke. When Garrett discovers that he has been duped, he drops Luke like a hot potato and cancels his contract.

Girls just want to have it their way is what this movie is about. The message is don’t be a flash-in-the-pan rock star; go into publishing and survive for the long haul. Peter Weller gives “Undiscovered” its final quarter-hour boost in a walk-on part he plays Wick Treadway, as a high-profile record company owner, while Fisher Stevens excels as an unsavory album producer. This movie is light as a soap bubble but glistens with substance. Girls attending an all-night pajama party with their stuffed bears would love this semi-music video, while older individuals may find themselves trying to wipe the tears out of their eyes before anybody else catches them. I bought it at a cheap sale at Movie Gallery and couldn’t believe how endearing—yes—endearing that it was. The last minute dash to LAX by Luke in his brother Euan’s colorful retro-Volkswagen bus is surprisingly suspenseful, even though you know Brier and he will solve their problems and live happily ever after.

Indeed, the atmospheric cinematography of Danny Hiele of “Shades” gives Avis’ movie more depth than you’d imagine. The complications in this kind of chick flick drives guys crazy and that only a teenage girl without a boyfriend would enjoy since it has no grasp on reality. Kuma, Luke's Runyon Canyon Dog, steals every scene that he is in with his real ‘live’ skateboarding antics. Dyed-in-the-wool romantics should stock up on Kleenex.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE PINK PANTHER'' (2006)

Former “Saturday Night Live” comedian Steve Martin behaves like a half-witted buffoon in “Cheaper by the Dozen” director Shawn Levy’s “The Pink Panther” (*1/2 stars out of ****),a juvenile, PG-rated prequel/remake of Blake Edwards’ seminal original with Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, and David Niven. Martin was a hoot on “Saturday Night Live” and he was hilarious in “The Jerk.” However, he isn’t as funny as either Peter Sellers, who created the accident-prone Inspector Jacques Clouseau, or even Alan Arkin, who stepped into Sellers’ shoes during the interim for Bud Yorkin’s “Inspector Clouseau.” Indeed, Martin isn’t even as good as the animated Inspector in the “Pink Panther” cartoons that David H. DePatie and Fritz Freleng created going back to 1965. Furthermore, even the worst Peter Sellers’ movie “Trail of the Pink Panther” is side-splitting stuff compared to this updated, deflated, kiddie farce. Martin plays the role so broadly that you have no sympathy for him. You don’t cringe when he makes a mistake. The physical gags, with the exception of when dainty but delectable Emily Mortimer winds up sitting on the shoulders with her pelvis in his face, are all laborious. Levy’s “Pink Panther” lacks the sophistication and wit of even the lesser Edwards’ “Pink Panther.” The gags are either recycled—such as the world globe that bounces across Paris creating mayhem—or just amateurish. Martin tries to imitate the Sellers’ pratfalls where the Inspector karate chops his way through imaginary interlopers. Meaning, he hacks away at curtains the shield nobody. Surprisingly, this leaden lampoon became an international box office hit and has now inspired a sequel.

The Len Blum and Steve Martin screenplay, based on the characters created by Blake Edwards and Maurice Richlin back in 1963, takes the storyline back in time to show us “the village idiot” that Clouseau was before Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Kevin Kline of “Wild Wild West”) summoned him from the provinces to Paris to recover the Pink Panther diamond. In the brisk whirl of vignettes, the uniformed Clouseau complete with a pencil-thin moustache, conducts himself like a colossal klutz, but the gags are flat. For example, the first gag has Clouseau and another gendarme careening down narrow streets with the siren going and Clouseau attaches a portable flashing light to the hood that flies off and strikes a woman on the sidewalk and knocks her down. Let me pause and laugh until I puke! The second gag has the gendarme behind the wheel pulling up to park at the scene of the crime, but he parks so close to the wall that Clouseau cannot get out. I’m still puking! Anyway, the gendarme pulls up farther so Clouseau can get out. Our hero finds himself at the scene of a traffic jam caused by an elderly man on a battery powered wheel chair that has stalled out because the wires have come loose from the post. Clouseau changes reconnects the wires to the wrong posts—they are clearly color coordinated--and the chair rockets off in reverse and the geezer slams into a sidewalk café. In the next series of vignettes, we see Clouseau barge through doorways to arrest the murderer of Pierre Fuquette. The first suspect is a basset hound, the second a baby in a crib and the third is . . . well . . . Pierre Fuquette himself! Clouseau quickly establishes that the case is closed. The only thing amusing about this is Pierre Fuquette’s risqué sounding name. The next scene shows a herd of goats chasing Clouseau through the streets. Is this comedy? No, it is contrivance that Shawn Levy’s “The Pink Panther” is hopelessly contrived.

Chief Inspector Dreyfus narrates these incidents from his office and observes, “I never thought I would have any use for him until that fateful day.” At this point, the plot kicks in at a soccer game where a celebrity coach, Yves Gluant (“The Transporter’s” Jason Statham in a cameo), appears before cheering crowds wearing the fabulous Pink Panther diamond ring on his hand and hustles into the stands to kiss his love Xania (African-American singing sensation Beyoncé Knowles) with whom he has had a high publicized romance. After the French team defeats the Chinese, Gluant is murdered. Somebody stabs him in his neck with a poison dart and he dies. When the authorities examine the body, they discover that the Pink Panther ring has disappeared! As it happens, Dreyfus is on the scene. He plans his strategy. He wants to find the Pink Panther diamond so that he can win the Medal of Honor that he has been nominated for seven times. Dreyfus tells his anonymous aide that he needs “an unimaginative, by-the-book, low-level, incompetent who will plod along, getting nowhere with the media watching his every move. And while he is getting nowhere, I will put together the finest team of investigators in France and we will hunt down the killers and retrieve the Pink Panther diamond and the Medal of Honor will be mine!”

Of course, the best laid plans are derailed when Clouseau arrives. He spears Dreyfus with his badge when they meet for the first time. Dreyfus lies to him and assures him that “a man of your talent merits greater responsibility than you have had up to this point.” Dreyfus assigned a second class detective Ponton (Jean Reno of “The Professional”) to keep him abreast of Clouseau’s every move. Poton becomes the equivalent of Peter Seller’s Asian houseboy Cato. Martin’s Clouseau trails Xania to New York City and gets into trouble at the airport and makes—not surprisingly—a fool of himself. In some ways, Martin's Clouseau is rather smarter than Sellers' Clouseau, but Martin has very few interesting scenes. The fight when Ponton wields his fists against the villains while Clouseau hacks frantically without hitting anybody is just too adolescent to be funny. The eleventh hour twists when Clouseau identifies the killer and recovers the diamond are virtually impossible to guess, so “The Pink Panther” cheats us. Again, Martin’s Clouseau lacks the inspired lunacy of Seller’s Clouseau and Shawn Levy cannot make this comedy of error look anything more than contrived. Kline isn’t half as funny as Herbert Lom’s Dreyfus. Clive Owen makes a cameo as a James Bond type British secret agent who designates himself as 006, but neither Levy nor his writers take advantage of his presence to beef up the action. The “hamburger” pronunciation scene is mildly funny. The cartoon title credits are fair, but this “Pink Panther” is more stink than pink.