Jede Menge Ärger

Its been a while since a movie has made me laugh out loud... at home... on DVD without the help of a theater audience to provide a helpful laugh track... but this Dave Barry adaptation did it. The wildly slapstick script keeps its wildly varied cast hopping... and hopping admirably! Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Zooey Deschanel, Ben Foster, Stanley Tucci, Janeane Garafalo, Dennis Farina... heck, the entire ensemble is so good that I would gladly sign on for a sequel... hey Mr. Sonnenfeld, welcome back to funny!

Dave Barry, author of the book, does a really good job of portraying humor about his home town (Miami), teenagers, parents, divorce, marriage, autos, airports, difficulties of working in a strange town. The movie is humorous, fun, and moves along quickly. You can enjoy a nice time with it. All the actors do a great job. I think some of my favorite lines have to do with arrivals & departures at the airport! Behind the humor are the scarey foundations of some of the major scenarios of the movie. (Can't say what those are; gives too much away.) So if you are in need of a comedy to enjoy, but which may leave a residue of some of the problems of today's world, watch "Big Trouble".

I consider myself an intelligent person, a lover of movies, and having seen this movie twice now, I still think it's great. "Laugh-out-loud-embarrassing-the-person-sitting-next-to-you" great. The film was perfectly cast, perfectly paced, just bizarre enough to keep one's attention, and loaded with funny, crazy scenes. I haven't met a person in the flesh who hated this film, and yet the critics and several folks here have trashed the heck out of it. Frankly, it would seem that America has lost its sense of humor.

It's Easter, and as my parents sit in the living room watching television with the volume turned up to 86, here I sit in my bedroom, typing a review for the movie we just saw, "Big Trouble." It was my father's choice, a choice I assume he quickly began to lament, as the movie almost immediately begins with a scene of a man sucking the toes of his incredibly attractive maid. I mean, if you thought watching sex scenes with your parents was awkward, just try watching foot fetishism.

"Big Trouble" is one of my dad's favorite comedies, and honestly, I can understand why. It's a breezy, quickly paced, and fast moving little flick that's charmingly irreverent and definitely unpredictable. With a surprisingly star-studded cast and everything from bumbling hitmen to a street full of goats to Johnny Knoxville trying to rob a bar, "Big Trouble" has enough characters and plot points to fill the first two seasons of a CBS television show. And somehow, the movie makes it work, most likely because of the overall bizarness of the story.

Ben Foster, Tim Allen, Zoey Deschanel, and Rene Russo all have parts to play in this film, including a laundry list of other stars too numerous to mention. And part of the fun of watching this movie was seeing who was going to show up next. All of them have their own role in this movie, and all of them get into scenarios so unrealistic, bordering on cartoonish, that at times this movie felt like a live-action Looney Tunes epsiode. But, and I hate to say this, it adds to the films charm. I mean, this movie is so out there that I guarantee you've never seen anything like it. It's a very weird, almost surreal movie, but it's fun.

The overall bizarness of this story made it enjoyable for me to watch, and the one liners and running gags sprinkled throughout made me laugh harder than I expected. I'm not as big of a fan of this movie as my dad is, but it had more than enough wackiness to keep me entertained throughout.

7/10

I still remember laughing so hard I was in tears in a theater filled with less than 20 people! A great cast and well written, this movie got the shaft after it was suddenly moved to a 12/2001 release (with almost no publicity)after the events of 9/11 because the movie had scenes depicting lax airport security. We Americans were far to fragile to see someone smuggling an atomic bomb and a gun through poor security! What people missed was a funny story and some of the best one-liners I have ever heard ("maybe you guys should plead Not Guilty by reason of stupidity!). Honestly, I have never been able to drive into an airport without thinking about Arriving and Departing ("We're arriving, but then we are departing?")and Florida Gator fans just get hammered! Great flick, get the DVD and see it for real, not the Comedy Central version.