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ONE NIGHT AT McCOOL'S Send This Review to a Friend
Too crass to be sufficiently funny, first-time feature director Harald Zwart's "One Night at McCool's" aims at broad comedy, but despite a good cast, misses broadly. It works very hard with minor results.
Beautiful Liv Tyler gets a charge of energy here as Jewel, a sexy femme fatale who makes a habit of seducing and fleecing men, not that Jewel doesn't show signs of enjoying the sex. The men who fall into her naughty but dangerous orbit include Matt Dillon as Randy (and he is), John Goodman as a turned-on detective and Paul Reiser as Carl, a lawyer who likes to be leather-bound and shackled. Reba McEntire turns up as Reiser's rather amazed psychiatrist.
Randy, seated in a bingo parlor, recounts the story of his disastrous involvement to Michael Douglas as Burmeister, a hit man he is hiring to get even with Jewel. The hairpiece Burmeister wears is the latest in tackiness. Although it's meant as part of the image, Douglas looks so ridiculous as to make him visually atrocious instead of funny. The part is a regrettable come-down for Douglas. The plot grows steadily more bizarre, and the humor is more absurd than amusing. A USA Films release.
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