Opens May 12, 2000

By Duane Byrge

If you're going to write a dumb comedy, you've got to come up with some smart stuff. It also helps to throw in some truly twisted things, and a few outrageously cruel slapstick scenes. In Screwed we get a Hawaiian shirt, a nippy dog, and Sherman Helmsley in Speedos. That's the summit of the inspired nuttiness in this Norm Macdonald starrer. If the filmmakers had included a farting sequence, that would have topped all other inspirations in this hapless, laugh-less mess.

Although there's nothing really funny about this comedy, you can sit back and at least see a few ingredients and comic ideas that screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (People vs. Larry Flynt, Man on the Moon, Ed Wood) might have grazed against in ramming together their storyline. There's a Hawaiian shirt that Macdonald wears, very neo-Animal House and Jim Carrey in a kind of Ace Ventura way, and there's a creepy little dog in the Something About Mary mode, but that's about it.

Since, Alexander and Karaszewski are graduates of USC's School of Cinema one would expect they'd at least know where to pilfer some inspired gags: Re-tool a little Blake Edwards' slapstick, lift a comic chase sequence from a Buster Keaton classic, pocket a situation or two from an old Bob Hope road movie, or even cadge an early morning cartoon series from days of yore. Nope.You'd think these guys were born yesterday, or, perhaps, never saw a real comedy before. Worse yet, you'd think they have no sense of humor. Indeed, the comic plot is so heavy-hammered and dorkish that even Bill Gates' most humorless nerd could have programmed something that would have approximated a movie comedy better than this no-brainer.

Such that it is, the story bounces around a myopic butler (Macdonald) who after years of abuse from his dastardly old employer, Mrs. Crock (Elaine Stritch), decides to wreak his revenge. Along with an equally dopey sidekick, Rusty (Dave Chapelle), Willard decides to kidnap the old biddy's dog and hold it for ransom. They steal the mutt but only after the doggie latches onto his arm and Willard ends up spraying blood all over Mrs. Crock's walls. As such, the cops think that Willard's been kidnapped. Not entirely surprising, the parsimonious old coot doesn't want to pay up for someone as worthless as Willard.

The story careens around, fittingly, as the two dumbbells tool around in Rusty's greasy chicken van (again, sound familiar), and then Danny DeVito shows up as a ghoulish morgue man as the lads have decided to fake Willard's death. In any event, the plot-less plot has now completely plodded-out and the humor is left to wherever the viewer can find it. As such, we're reduced to finding humor in the dimwitted outfits the characters wear. Danny DeVito himself is not much more than a sight gag here. Generously, you could say he plays kind of a blood 'n guts version of the Penguin but that would be a stretch. The big yuk with his character is, well, he's a nut about Jack Lord and the good old Hawaii 5-0 TV series. Pretty wild and crazy, huh?

We'll spare further delineation of the plot since it makes no sense, even in a free-form comedic kind of way. Alexander and Karaszewski share directing credit also, although the word blame might be more applicable. There is little sign of direction: Conceivably that consisted of telling the camera operator to start shooting when everyone was placed in the scene. Unfortunately, there is not one memorable visual joke or even the rudiments of comic punctuation in the pacing and transitions. And, while there are some ripe targets for satire, including the fact Mrs. Crock's money is made from a Mrs. Fields-type cookie kingdom, there is absolutely no point of view or personality to the alleged humor.

Anyone who endures to the end will feel that the film should be re-titled Screwed Out of the Price of Admission.