bitter-4

Christian Slater in "The Deal". Good lord in heaven: what did Slater do in a former life to deserve this movie? He has made a lot of really bad choices lately ("Mindhunters", "Masked and Anonymous", "Alone in The Dark") but this is the kind of script even Oliver Platt would walk away from. A laughably bad script from first (and hopefully last) time screen writer, Ruth Epstein, who should have kept her job at Goldman Sachs. The pathetic premise of an oil conspiracy is about as thin as an Olsen Twin, and the dialog is twice as brittle; made doubly so by Angie Harmon when she tries to pull off a Russian accent (which, if I've done my math right, means the dialog has the octo-brittleness of a single Olsen, but I digress). Slater tries to crawl his way through a flimsy maze of corporate deceit, while woman after woman can't help but chew his tongue. Slema Blair is actually very good as his tree-hugging girlfriend who shows him the path to salvation, only the scene where she actually show him anything must have been deleted, 'cause I never saw it. Maybe they're saving it for the DVD. There is simply nothing thrilling about this thriller. They must have just figured if the stacked the cast with actors like Robert Loggia and John Heard they could ad-lib their way around the awkward exposition. Director Harvey Kahn, who has produced an impressive body of work but directed nothing of note, must have compromising photos of the cast. Ultimately, Slater is totally miss-cast as a Wall Street hack. They should have gone with an unknown and then maybe they could have gotten away with the low budget production values and pass 'The Deal' off as a student film. You have been warned.

"Knots" a predictable sex comedy from director of no note, Greg Lombardo. It is short on both sex and comedy, but is almost worth watching because A) John Stamos is actually good in it. B) You get to see Ric Ocasek's hot, Czech wife naked and C) Tara Reid surprisingly doesn't suck in it. The down side? The sex is totally tame and it's really not very funny. The rest of the cast is serviceable. Scott Cohen (from The Gilmore Girls) and Annabeth Gish (from The West Wing) play are bored married couple and Paulina Porizkova plays a vixen that reaps hell into their lives for no good reason at all, but ultimately we don't really care about any of the characters as the screenplay limps to it's obvious, group hug conclusion. "For No Good Reason At All". That would have been a good tag line for "Knots". You have been warned.

Will Smith in "Hitch", a pleasant little romance, but really not much of a movie. First time screenwriter, Kevin Bisch, has cobbled together a bunch of clichés and the movies funniest moments are given away in the TV commercials, but somehow you forgive it all because Will Smith looks so damn comfortable on the screen. He and Kevin James work very well together, but the romantic interests is Revlon Model Eva Mendes, who is very easy on the eye but is nothing but an embarrassment as an actress.The female lead should have been former Calvin Klein model Amber Valletta, who plays Kevin James' love interest. She and Smith had some real chemistry in the one scenes they share together, but Mendes was in Will Smith's "Miami" video, so we can only guess how she got the job. The real shock is director Andy Tennant, who has made nothing but crap up until now, and he was a dancer in the Bee Gee's "Sgt. Pepper" movie, which has nothing to do with anything, but I do think he should be made fun of for it. The DVD offers little in the way of interesting extras: a deleted scene where Mendes flashes people on the ferry, Kevin James improving a dance routine and your standard blooper reel. Not a full blown chick flick, but "Hitch" is definitely a date movie, you have been warned.