In theaters

CORKY ROMANO, directed by Rob Pritts, written by David Garrett and Jason Ward, 86 minutes, rated PG-13.

In the new Rob Pritts comedy, “Corky Romano,” Chris Kattan takes the title role and runs with it, falls with it, stumbles with it, explodes with it and nearly dies with it – all in an effort to get people to laugh.

Shame that doesn’t happen.

The film, from a screenplay by David Garrett and Jason Ward, is one of the year’s more painful comedies – not just for audiences, who, at my screening, were so unmoved they could have been watching a documentary on dish rags. But apparently also for Kattan, who bumps into just about everything here, thanks to a bruisingly bad script.

Best known as “Saturday Night Live’s” desperate disco hustler Doug Butabi, the crazed chimpanzee Mr. Peepers, and a male stripper named Mango, Kattan, who previously co-starred in 1998’s “A Night at the Roxbury” and this year’s “Monkeybone,” is the latest “SNL” vet to humiliate himself straight into a movie career.

“Corky Romano” isn’t the worst effort to come out of the SNL troupe – that prize goes to Julia Sweeney’s straight-to-video abomination, “It’s Pat: The Movie” – but it does have the distinction of making Al Franken’s “Stuart Saves His Family” seem like a gift.

In the film, Kattan is Corky, a clumsy assistant veterinarian at the clinic Poodles and Pussies who’s long been estranged from his mafia family. But when his ailing father, Pops Romano (Peter Falk), is indicted for murder, Corky is abruptly called home, where he’s asked to infiltrate the FBI, steal the evidence stacked against his father and burn it.

With the help of his two bullying, meathead brothers, the illiterate Paulie and the latent homosexual Peter (Peter Berg and Chris Penn), Corky becomes superagent Pissant – yes, Pissant, and isn’t that funny? – a setup for pratfalls and slapstick that finds Kattan nervously willing to do anything to make the film work.

It doesn’t. Packed with the easiest sort of writing – fart jokes, animal sight gags and one notably crude electrocution – “Corky Romano” is shameless and embarrassing, but not funny. There are moments in this movie – particularly when a boa constrictor pops out of Corky’s pants to the knowing smile of an elderly woman – that may punctuate how quirky Corky is, but that also prove how far some will go to get themselves on a movie screen.

Grade: D-

On video and DVD

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

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 million-plus 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 their film began without a finished script, those rumors nevertheless seem founded since the film itself feels unfinished.

Amusing storylines 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,” one wishes Chelsom, Laughlin and Henry had narrowed their focus and just chosen between the two – town or country.

Still, considering the comedic dirge audiences are hammered with each week (see above), 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 has suggested – but it also isn’t the great comedy its talented cast could have pulled off.

Grade: C+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 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/DVD CORNER

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

Angel Eyes ? C+

Cats & Dogs ? B+

Star Wars: The Phantom

Menace (DVD debut) ? B

Town & Country ? C+

Bridget Jones?s Diary ? A-

One Night at McCool?s ? C-

Snow White and the Seven

Dwarfs (DVD debut) ? A+

Heartbreakers ? B+

The Mummy Returns ? D

Along Came a Spider ? C-

A Knight?s Tale ? C