One Night at McCool's

McCool's is a pleasant enough spot to while away the hours but it's not exactly the rollicking comedy joint its trailers make it out to be. Genial and amusing, the movie aims for something like the dark, silly humor of There's Something About Mary. But unlike that film, One Night at McCool's never fully rises to the occasion, maintaining a goofily even keel throughout but rarely tipping over into all-out froth and nuttiness. The movie's setup is great and the central constellation of characters is good -- but after the comedy reaches a certain plateau at about the halfway point it never really kicks into the next gear. Dillon, Reiser, and Goodman are great as the three poor slobs who fall hard for the all-things-to-all-men Jewel (Tyler). Told Rashomon-style as each of the men relates his version of the events to a chosen confessor, the film initially entertains us with its presentation of various versions of the same truth. A veteran of commercial and video work, first-time feature director Zwart dazzles us at first with an array of snazzy editing techniques, wipes, and visual jokes. His pizzazz peters out in the second half, although a climactic shootout and free-for-all at the end revives the memory of his earlier stylistic treats. Liv Tyler is a stunning beauty and she uses all her curves in all the right ways to run circles around these dumbstruck men. However, her acting lacks the skilled shading a more experienced comedienne might have brought to the project. Granted, the script (by Stan Seidel, who died last summer from complications of Crohn's disease) affords her character little to work with apart from body language. We know nothing of what motivates Jewel or what makes her tick. She is simply the object of every man's affection. The Rashomon tactic of multiple retellings of essentially the same set of facts but from different perspectives was also not used to its utmost. Opportunities for radically different points of view would have been permissible here, but the film settles for minor variations when it might have gotten bigger laughs with more divergent tales. The person who comes out best in this whole thing is Michael Douglas, who co-stars as a creepy hitman and whose production company developed the movie. Wearing a godawful toupee and scuzzy attire, he plays the role of the sleazebag to the absolute hilt -- and will no doubt be embraced by Americans in a metatextual way as the lecherous old man we all imagine him to be in reality. But, clearly, he's having a load of fun here -- and when he's around, so do we. Otherwise, One Night at McCool's offers decent refreshments but is a few ticks short of happy hour.