The degree to which director Peter Berg (The Kingdom) handles these sincere and earnest moments adroitly strikes one as so convincing and so astonishing after the ineptitude of the first half hour that, again, one cannot shake the feeling that he should just lose the comedy altogether -- that he's working in the wrong genre here. Unfortunately, the picture sets up such interesting implications in terms of what it does with John Hancock's backstory that the ending feels like a cop-out, both unresolved and half-assed. In terms of where it leaves the other characters, it raises far more questions than it can even begin to answer, and Berg and his scriptwriters fail to even try. The performances feel uneven; Smith is engaging as usual, but Bateman delivers an absolutely atrocious portrayal that surely must have left the director and producers gagging helplessly. He interprets Ray Embrey as a kind of whiny and ineffectual weakling -- a loser wimp whose ability to attract his dynamic spo...