‘McCool’ script lacking despite sense of style

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In theaters

ONE NIGHT AT MCCOOL’S. 93 minutes, R, directed by Harald Zwart, written by Stan Seidel.

Harald Zwart’s noirish comedy, “One Night at McCool’s,” is one of those movies that probably looked better on the page than it does on the screen.

It has a few inspired moments wrapped around its slim premise, but those moments are undermined by a dense, hackneyed script that rarely takes off to become the nihilistic comedy it aspires to be.

As written by the late Stan Seidel, the film is essentially a re-envisioning of Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” as seen through the eyes of Quentin Tarantino. It tells its story in flashback through several different viewpoints, from which audiences are asked to draw their own conclusions about one woman’s influence over a handful of desperate men.

That woman is the pouty-lipped bundle of lies named Jewel Valentine (Liv Tyler), a saucy con artist with a breathy voice and a well-intentioned push-up bra who is so smitten with modern conveniences, she’ll apparently do anything to achieve the middle-class status that has eluded her for years.

Good for Jewel.

But high expectations aside, Jewel has other gifts that go beyond her knockout body. She’s the type of femme fatale who has the unique ability to be all things to all sorts of men. To Matt Dillon’s dumb bartender, Randy, she’s the sweet girl next door he’s always wanted to take home; to Reiser’s creepy lawyer, Carl, she’s the salacious S/M sexpot he’s always wanted to take to his bedroom; and to John Goodman’s lovesick detective, Dehling, she’s the perfect replacement for his dead wife.

This lovable, chameleonlike quality of Jewel’s comes in handy, especially since she’s tricked one of these men into killing her former boyfriend, Utah – a character played by Andrew “Dice” Clay as if he were playing, well, Andrew “Dice” Clay.

To reveal too much more of the plot would be to ruin its surprises, so we’ll leave it at this for “One Night at McCool’s” – as contrived and as chatty as it sometimes is, the film does have a sense of style in spite of its utter lack of substance, and Michael Douglas is nicely smarmy as the sleazy, big-haired hit man, Mr. Burmeister.

But because the film is told from so many different points of view, it’s tough to get a handle on the characters, a bizarre group, who are constantly changing as each man tells his version of the story. That decision might make “McCool’s” an interesting experiment for Mr. Zwart, a Dutch-born director of commercials, but because we never come to know who these people are, it also robs his film of emotional depth.

Grade: C-

TOWN & COUNTRY. 102 minutes, R, directed by Peter Chelsom, written by Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry.

After years of delays, rewrites, reshoots, bad word-of-mouth, escalating budgets, finger pointing, ugly rumors and, in the end, a complete lack of promotional push from its disgruntled cast, Peter Chelsom’s $90-plus million opus, “Town & Country,” is a mess, for sure, but not necessarily one that isn’t worth a look.

At times, the film is giddy, witty and outrageously funny; at other times, it’s incoherent, desperate and ridiculous. It has no shortage of talent – the film features Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Garry Shandling in starring roles – but what it lacks from the start is a sense of direction, focus and narrative pull.

Although Chelsom and screenwriters Michael Laughlin and Buck Henry have denied that their film began without a finished script, those rumors nevertheless seem founded since the film itself feels unfinished.

Amusing story lines are started and dropped. Promising scenes that have nothing to do with anything come and go. There are, in fact, so many disjointed and unrelated scenes in “Town & Country,” particularly toward the end, where the film truly falls apart, one wishes Chelsom, Laughlin and Henry had taken on less of a burden and just chosen between the two locals in their title – town or country.

Still, considering the comedic dirge audiences are hammered with each week, the film isn’t a complete bust. It has more than its share of good moments and should be enjoyed for what it is – a fun, yet misguided farce that follows two wealthy Manhattan couples – Porter (Beatty) and Ellie (Keaton), Mona (Hawn) and Griffin (Shandling) – going through some monumental marital problems and low moments of infidelity.

With Jenna Elfman decked out in her best Marilyn Monroe drag, Andie MacDowell as a crazed heiress, Marian Seldes as a potty-mouthed, wheelchair-wielding shrew and Charlton Heston having a great time poking fun at himself as a gun-waving maniac, “Town & Country” isn’t as bad as its negative hype suggests – but it also isn’t the great comedy its esteemed cast could have pulled off.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style, Thursdays in the scene, Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com

THE VIDEO CORNER

Renting a video? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

All the Pretty Horses ? C-

Miss Congeniality ? B

The Emperor’s

New Groove ? A-

Little Nicky ? F

One Day in

September ? B+

Bamboozled ? B+

Finding Forrester ? B+

The Ladies Man ? D+

Bounce ? B+

Men of Honor ? C+

Space Cowboys ? B+

Girlfight ? A-

102 Dalmatians ? B+

The Legend of

Bagger Vance ? D

Kestrel’s Eye ? A

Red Planet ? C+

Rugrats in Paris ? B+