Most damaging, perhaps is in the way the actors have been directed. In this film, there are no straight players. Everyone, even classically deadpan Bob Newhart, has been over directed. The background music keeps pace with the actors, as if borrowed from a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and makes comment on the action and jokes. The exaggerated performances of the actors and music can not cover the greater weaknesses of the dialogue.
Many scenes are just filler packed around a single gag.
A painfully unfunny bachelor party scene goes three jokes too long in order to poke fun at Howard's affection for Barbra Striesand. These characters are not revealed or developed, the story shows us nothing we haven't already seen a dozen times in recent film. Richard McDonald, 1997. Well, they managed not to. Calder expects to further his career and to help form Powell's legal defense by uncovering a justification for his aberrant behaviour.