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Originally
due in theatres just ten days after the 9/11 attacks, Big
Trouble certainly isn't too big (it clocks in at under 90
minutes), but it is likely to cause a whole lot of trouble.
What starts out as an innocent Pulp Fictionesque
suitcase-in-the-trunk Maguffin eventually reveals itself to be a
stolen Russian nuclear weapon that is snuck past clueless,
crooked airport security personnel and taken aboard a plane,
which is nearly shot down by a pair of Air Force fighter jets.
And if you don't think that's a funny concept...well,
you're probably not alone.
Luckily,
most of that doesn't happen until the last reel, and by then you
will have been put through the comedic ringer.
Trouble is based on Dave Barry's novel of the same
name, and, like most of Barry's work, it's alternately
hysterical and irritating, and never anything else.
Like the non-stop gag-fest Rat Race, it has a huge
cast of borderline stars and it throws about a bazillion jokes
at the screen, with slightly more than half sticking and about
one in ten worthy of any kind of gut-based laugh.
Trouble
opens with a scene featuring shaggy, homeless narrator Puggy
(Jason Lee) carrying on about the story of
Noah and the gathering of the animals two by two.
I'm still trying to figure out what his speech had to do
with anything that happens in the film, though it does have more
than its fair share of animals (in fact, the only thing more
shocking than the sheer size of the cast is the script's ability
to use critters like dogs, goats, hallucinogenic frogs and even
mosquitos for comedic purposes), and its characters seem to
travel in pairs (two cops, two hitmen, two dirty delinquents,
two teens, two federal agents, and even two Andy Richters).
Puggy, who witnesses most of Trouble's events from a
tree, begins to unfurl his story, which goes a little something
like this...
Eliot Arnold (Tim
Allen) is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the
Miami Herald (a la Barry) who lost his job and passion for life
when his wife left him for a tennis pro.
His son Matt (Ben Foster) is involved in a game called
Killer that involves blasting a specific target with a
high-powered squirt gun. The
night Matt chooses to soak his target, Jenny (Zooey Deschanel),
is unfortunately the same evening a pair of professional hitmen
(Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler) have chosen to whack Jenny's dad
(Stanley Tucci). Confusion
and hilarity ensue.
But
that's not all. Eliot
falls for Jenny's mom (Rene Russo) while her dad is busy buying
the aforementioned nuclear device, which is being pursued by a
couple of feds (Omar Epps and Heavy D) and then stolen by a duo
of idiotic thieves (Johnny Knoxville and Tom Sizemore).
I forget exactly how the two cops (Janeane Garofalo and
Patrick Warburton) fit into the whole thing, but it doesn't
really matter.
Trouble
was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and feels like a lighter
version of his Get Shorty, which I liked even less than
this. I'm sure
Sonnenfeld was looking for something simple and fun he could
direct in between unwatchable, big-budget dreck like Wild
Wild West and Men in Black 2, so, instead of making
bombs, he decided to make a movie about one (How's THAT for a
twist? Maybe John Travolta can make a movie where he either
sucks or blows something for two hours).
The drawing card here is, I guess, the big cast, but
these are far from A-list or even B-list stars.
When Knoxville and Lee are the two most happening actors
of the bunch, you've got a whole different kind of big trouble.
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