If it weren’t for Next Friday, Play It to the Bone would be the worst movie of the new year.  Heck, it isn’t even the second-best boxing movie to debut in the last ten days (see The Hurricane and the ABC biopic about Muhammad Ali).  Welcome to January – the Hollywood wasteland for all things that just plain blow.

Bone is sold as a boxing flick, pitting two over-the-hill fighters that blew their only chance at stardom many years ago.  The only inkling of imagination in the rambling script is the fact that the combatants – played by 39-year-old Antonio Banderas and 38-year-old Woody Harrelson - are best friends.  Items to file under “worrisome” are the fact that both blokes are in love with the same woman and that the woman loves both of the blokes, not to mention the fact that Bone is actually more of a road movie than a boxing movie.

That’s right – despite a running time of over two hours, Bone contains less than thirty minutes of guys pummeling each other with giant red mitts.  Astute readers should be asking themselves, “Golly, what happens in the other ninety-plus minutes?” (even though some of you may need to take your shoes and socks off to accomplish this feat).  I’ll tell you – the first three-quarters of the film consists of the boxers and their lady friend driving from Los Angeles to the Mandalay Bay Casino in Las Vegas.

Sounds exciting, eh?  To make matters worse, what should be a five-hour trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas takes forever.  They stop at least four times during the boring voyage (I guess at that age, you need to pee a lot), which makes the film seem like it was shot in real time.  In reality, they should have been somewhere near Memphis after driving this far.

Here’s a quick rundown of the three suspects:

Cesar “El Califa” Dominguez (Banderas, The Thirteenth Warrior) – an All My Children junkie plagued by the memory of an incident at Madison Square Garden several years ago.  He looks like Frankenstein when he puts on sunglasses and he dabbled in homosexual love.  And I think “El Califa” means “The Dingus.”  Read:  the sensitive one.

Vince Boudreau (Harrelson, EdTV) – a bad-ass-turned-bible-thumper that loves to wrap his cars around telephone poles.  Like Cesar, he is dogged by the fact that he blew his one big chance at boxing fame.  He has a shaved head and is covered in tattoos.  Read:  the crazy one.

Grace Pasic (Lolita Davidovich, Mystery, Alaska) – a horn-dog that dated, among others, both Cesar and Vince.  She still loves them both, but isn’t interested in making time with either.  She longs for something but can’t quite put her finger on it, instead devoting her time to creating wacky inventions.  Read:  the girl.

After the opening credits, which are played over a montage of Vegas casinos, we see the two down-and-out fighters training in their L.A. gym.  They get an unexpected call from crooked fight promoter Joe Domino (Tom Sizemore, Bringing Out the Dead), who desperately needs two boxers to fill in his under-card for the big Tyson fight that evening.  Cesar and Vince agree, but only if the winner is guaranteed a title shot.  When Domino relents, the duo picks up Grace and head for Vegas.  Hmm…that’s how I would prepare for the biggest fight of my life – squeezed into a car, riding through the desert in a convertible, with sand whipping into my teary eyes.

During the excruciating journey, we learn that both Cesar and Vince have boxing ghosts in their pasts.  Most films would wait until the last reel to reveal them to you.  Not Bone, though.  They reveal them almost immediately.  I guess they had to get them out of the way for the absolutely pointless scenes with Lucy Liu (Ally McBeal).

The fight starts out as a battle between two losers that nobody has ever heard of, but at the end of ten blood-spattered rounds, it ends up being the match of the year.  The crowd and announcers slowly become mesmerized by the determination of the two boxers.  Unfortunately, this compelling quality doesn’t exactly make the transition to the saps sitting in the theater.

The actual fight scenes are in color; a refreshing change from the black-and-white boxing scenes that seem mandatory since Raging Bull (again, see The Hurricane).  They are well-choreographed and bloody, which is about all you can ask for.  Like Any Given Sunday, there are a bunch of slow-motion moments during the fight where the lights disappear – just to look stylish but, instead, only distract.

Apparently there are no knockdown rules in the movies, as each fighter hits the canvas five times apiece.  Like I said before, the fight lasts under thirty minutes, even though anyone with a brain in their head already knows what the outcome will be before they buy the ticket.  But, then again, anyone with a brain in their head shouldn’t be buying tickets to see this.

There are also a ton of cameos, from real-life fight commentators (Jim Lampley, Larry Merchant and George Foreman), to the referee (Mitch Halpern), to the star-studded fight attendees (Kevin Costner, Rod Stewart, James Woods and many more), to a long list of “Am I supposed to recognize that guy?” sportswriters that you don’t recognize until you see their names in the credits.

There’s only one direction to focus the blame for Bone’s failure to deliver a knockout – writer/director Ron Shelton.  And he should know better – he’s already made one bad boxing flick (The Great White Hype).  He hasn’t come close to matching his career peak (1988’s Bull Durham), instead going for laughs with derogatory gay jokes.  In Shelton’s defense, he could have had the film turn into a crazy ménage-a-trois, like Gregg Araki’s Splendor, but thankfully, he doesn’t.  Instead, Bone just kind of closes without tying up any of the loose ends between Grace and her men.  But at two hours and four minutes, I was grateful that it didn’t.