If you know it's stupid, does that make it o.k.?

Rating: Null/10 (9 June 2003)

While the comic one-liners liberally quoted (and misquoted) in the other reviews stay in mind, this film is a rancid hash of cliches put together by people who can't construct a screenplay or edit a sequence so that it is within waving
distance of logic. Nicholas Cage may have been a good actor at one time, but
after seeing him in this and in "Adaptation" (where he seems to think that a
different shirt is a different characterization), I'm not so sure. If there's anything going on inside him, it's not reaching his face and it's sure not reaching his audience.
Everyone else gives up and chews the scenery, and Steve Buscemi has the
grace to look embarrassed. (Would someone please give this guy a role where
he *doesn't* have to play a creep? See "Parting Glances" if you can find it to get an idea of what his range would be like if some casing agent had imagination.) This is a waste of everyone involved, except for the hacks producing, writing, and directing this mess and for Cage, who is starting to look like he deserves it.