Blanks Over Hollywood
Though it is based on a true story, accounted for in an article in The New Yorker, The Last Shot plays more like a misfired adaptation of Woody Allen's hilarious Bullets Over Broadway. That said, funny scenes are scattered throughout writer Jeff Nathanson's uneven directorial debut, which stars Matthew Broderick and Alec Baldwin.
As an FBI agent seeking to advance his dead-end career by nailing the mob in an elaborate scheme to make a movie, Baldwin does his best. The Last Shot's most sympathetic character—everyone is a liar or a loser in this cynical send-up—Baldwin's is the only beating heart this movie's got. It's nice to see the only actor who played Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan character as a hero—Baldwin originated the role for the screen in The Hunt for Red October—play someone besides an eccentric excuse for the likes of Ben Stiller and Mike Myers.
The plot is holier than Sonny Corleone's car but here goes: Baldwin's fed, pretending to be a producer, snags Broderick's mediocre screenwriter, who has been pitching his screenplay for years, to write and direct the movie he's dreamed of—complete with casting approval—and Broderick, nebbish once again, figures it's the chance of a lifetime.
It isn't—if only because the plug must be pulled on the picture in order to catch the mobster (Tony Shalhoub) in the criminal act. The crude—terribly crude—comedy unfolds as one, long inside joke, with a gangster connection and a silver lining about pursuing one's dream—like a Hollywood version of Bullets Over Broadway.
But Nathanson can't settle on gross-out funny or light, good-natured satire. With jokes about urination, dead dogs and the requisite stream of profanity, The Last Shot isn't consistently funny—a pissing scene stops the movie dead in its tracks—and it isn't realistic enough to make its' characters count.
Broderick's struggling writer is never plausible, much less likable; so naïve that he buys Baldwin's B.S. but shrewd enough to fake his way through his career. Others in the ensemble are so up and down they just get in the way, especially Calista Flockhart (The Birdcage) as Broderick's girlfriend. One minute, she is the practical one of the two, tired of their starving Hollywood lifestyle, the next she's threatening to kill a dog and get gang-raped in a porn flick over losing the lead in Broderick's movie.
The lead, it turns out, is played by an actress played by Toni Collette (About a Boy), who plays it right down the middle—too straight to be funny, too much to be real. Joan Cusack plays an agent who coaches Baldwin's FBI detail on how to go Hollywood. Cusack played the same role in Where the Heart Is.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well as that sweetened movie did in nailing a bull's eye. Neither dark enough to shoot down going Hollywood nor light enough to lift the scriptwriter within, The Last Shot, except for a few good laughs, never takes its aim.
As an FBI agent seeking to advance his dead-end career by nailing the mob in an elaborate scheme to make a movie, Baldwin does his best. The Last Shot's most sympathetic character—everyone is a liar or a loser in this cynical send-up—Baldwin's is the only beating heart this movie's got. It's nice to see the only actor who played Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan character as a hero—Baldwin originated the role for the screen in The Hunt for Red October—play someone besides an eccentric excuse for the likes of Ben Stiller and Mike Myers.
The plot is holier than Sonny Corleone's car but here goes: Baldwin's fed, pretending to be a producer, snags Broderick's mediocre screenwriter, who has been pitching his screenplay for years, to write and direct the movie he's dreamed of—complete with casting approval—and Broderick, nebbish once again, figures it's the chance of a lifetime.
It isn't—if only because the plug must be pulled on the picture in order to catch the mobster (Tony Shalhoub) in the criminal act. The crude—terribly crude—comedy unfolds as one, long inside joke, with a gangster connection and a silver lining about pursuing one's dream—like a Hollywood version of Bullets Over Broadway.
But Nathanson can't settle on gross-out funny or light, good-natured satire. With jokes about urination, dead dogs and the requisite stream of profanity, The Last Shot isn't consistently funny—a pissing scene stops the movie dead in its tracks—and it isn't realistic enough to make its' characters count.
Broderick's struggling writer is never plausible, much less likable; so naïve that he buys Baldwin's B.S. but shrewd enough to fake his way through his career. Others in the ensemble are so up and down they just get in the way, especially Calista Flockhart (The Birdcage) as Broderick's girlfriend. One minute, she is the practical one of the two, tired of their starving Hollywood lifestyle, the next she's threatening to kill a dog and get gang-raped in a porn flick over losing the lead in Broderick's movie.
The lead, it turns out, is played by an actress played by Toni Collette (About a Boy), who plays it right down the middle—too straight to be funny, too much to be real. Joan Cusack plays an agent who coaches Baldwin's FBI detail on how to go Hollywood. Cusack played the same role in Where the Heart Is.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well as that sweetened movie did in nailing a bull's eye. Neither dark enough to shoot down going Hollywood nor light enough to lift the scriptwriter within, The Last Shot, except for a few good laughs, never takes its aim.
