When my mom brought this one home from the DVD rental store, I could only sigh. She'd scraped the bottom of the barrel in the past, oh yes. We're talking Dunston Checks In and K-PAX, people. But this time, even she was ashamed: "I'm sorry--it's all they had."
Frank Morrison (John Travolta) is the most wonderful man you'll ever meet. He's divorced from his wife (Teri Polo--oh, how the mighty have fallen since Meet the Parents), but they have the Best. Divorce. Ever! (Seriously, these two are so civil towards one another, you'd think it was court-ordered.) He's mild-mannered and soft-spoken. He drinks Coke, not alcohol. He loves his son, Danny (Matthew O'Leary), even though he's a troublemaker (a fact that is established early on, so we know his credibility will come into question later on). He runs a quaint little boat-making business, but the only problem is that no one wants to buy his crappy little boats. But that's okay--he's willing to lose money on every boat he makes, so long as his clients are happy! He has an easy-going girlfriend who loves him even though he's po'. (In fact, she loves him because he's po'.)
Morrison is such a good guy that he even attends the wedding of his ex-wife. She's marrying Rick Barnes, a rich businessman who's just infused the local economy with money, so naturally everyone loves him, and no one asks too many questions, despite the fact that he's played by Vince Vaughn. Now, my mom taught me never to judge people by their looks, but Vince Vaughn is one scary looking mofo. (I don't know, maybe it's just his turn as Norman Bates that did it for me.) Well, one night, Danny witnesses Rick kill a man (Steve Buscemi), just for snoring. Okay, that's not the real reason, but the real reason isn't important, remember? He's Vince Vaughn. Naturally, no one believes Danny when he accuses Rick, because he's a kid and a troublemaker. No one, that is, except Travolta. (By the way, Matthew O'Leary, the actor playing Danny, easily gives the best performance in this movie--Travolta should start screening these kids so he doesn't get upstaged again.)
It goes on and on from there, and I'm sure you can figure out the outcome. Suffice it to say there is a lot of punching and threatening and lines beginning with, "I swear, as God as my witness, if you touch one hair on my boy's head..." (Uh, shouldn't that be "as Xenu as my witness"? Sorry, Scientology joke.) It all ends in a big fight to the death between Vaughn and Travolta, but the real hero here is an inanimate wooden stool. Trust me on that one.
I must also add, the way the film handles Teri Polo's character's pregnancy by Rick is pretty offensive. She obviously can't raise the baby of a killer, so they have to make her suffer a miscarriage, which she doesn't seem too distressed about. It comes off as way for the film to conveniently avoid dealing with the abortion issue. While I'm not suggesting, by any means, that a miscarriage is "the easy way out," it would have been more compelling to see her struggle with the fact that she is carrying a killer's baby.
While there are many, many, many things to poke fun at in this movie (many), what it suffers from most is a lack of proper pacing. When you're making a movie about troubled step-relations and family members who refuse to believe one another, you need some suspense. One minute, Rick is playing a rough game of catch with Danny. The next minute, he's killing someone. In order for the audience to understand why no one believes Danny, we need more than the exposition that Danny is a "liar. " We need to see Rick pulling the wool over the eyes of others long before he actually kills someone. For cripes' sake, he's giving all these shifty glances during his own wedding, before he's even said "I do." The whole storyline just feels rushed, and yet the audience is always way ahead of the characters, which never makes for a satisfying situation.
Also, what this movie needed was a resolution. Not because it would have made the movie better, but it would have made it more cheesy, and at the same time, aware of its own cheesiness--a good combination, in my book. As it is, the movie ends after the violent brawl, with Travolta driving off into the night. What it really needed was a scene with the subtitle, "Six months later," and Danny and his father working on a making a crappy wooden boat together, and sailing off into the sunset, with mom onboard embracing her husband--reunited, and it feels so good. Alas, one can only dream.
-reviewed by the ladybug, May 5, 2002
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