| BIG TROUBLE Rating:  Director: Barry Sonnenfeld Producers: Tom Jacobson, Barry Josephson, Barry Sonnenfeld Writers: Robert Ramsey & Matthew Stone, based on the novel by Dave Barry Director of Photography: Greg Gardiner Cast: Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Tom Sizemore, Dennis Farina |
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Review by: Ian
Golding
4/6/02
I'm probably not the best person to review Big Trouble. See, I'm a pretty big Dave Barry fan; I love his Miami Herald column, have a few of his books, and think he's one of the last true humorists left. That being said, I enjoyed Big Trouble more than most people will, but recognize that it would be wrong to actually recommend it.
Big Trouble tells the story of Eliot Arnold (Tim Allen), a former Miami Herald columnist who now runs his own ad agency. Like most of Barry's fiction, it's his own life with a sprinkle of "what if?" Arnold's son Matt (Ben Foster) is playing a game with kids in his class where he is required to shoot people with a squirt gun, and goes to classmate Jenny Herk's (Zooey Deschanel) house to get her. He accidentally interrupts a hit on Jenny's father, Arthur (Stanley Tucci), and the two out-of-town assassins get away. Arthur runs illegal guns, and realizes that his bosses are trying to have him whacked. He goes to a Russian bar, which is a front for weapons smuggling, and tries to buy a missile. During the transaction, two moronic career criminals, Snake and Eddie, (Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville) come in to rob the place. Snake and Eddie take Arthur back to his house, and then kidnap Jenny. Eliot and Arthur's wife Anna (Rene Russo) go after them, and more hilarity ensues.
It all sounds pretty convoluted, huh? It kind of is. There are just a ton of characters, each serving the basest of comic functions, and they don't really come across as characters. You really have to suspend your disbelief, and it still has an air of complete folly... Which might be why it worked so well for me. I felt like I was in on the joke, and I was supposed to be. Everyone in the film acknowledged the silliness of the story, and didn't try to make it come across as an overly dramatic character piece. It was just an excuse to pay off some fairly funny jokes. Most of them are running gags that weren't funny at first, but the film broke me down. The biggest laughs come at the end of the film, when we can reflect on what everyone has been through and appreciate how stupid and silly it all is.
Perhaps I can best equate this film to Quick Change, one of my greatest guilty pleasures. It that film is on TV, I'm in for the night. The story structure is very similar, and it has the same kind of wacky caper feel to it. True, Tim Allen is no Bill Murray, but Allen does a fair job at this film. He doesn't really get many of the punch lines, but helps set up a lot of them. Most of the good jokes go to the supporting characters, especially Dennis Farina, whose last scene spawned what some of my friends refer to as "Ian's super laugh." It's when I laugh so hard that I literally get a little light-headed and then start to cough. It's fairly rare, and is usually reserved for the best, most absurd comedy the world has to offer.
I'm not saying that you'll get the same
kind of effect, but if you can appreciate the humor of a film
like Quick Change, and let some of the weaker aspects of
Big Trouble slide, you might just find a few laughs in
there.
Agree? Disagree? Talk about it in the forums.
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