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She's three men over
the legal limit.
 Jurassic
Mark
SCORE: 2½
 Stars
One Night at McCool's proudly features a full-figured, redheaded, passively-aggressive, luscious femme fatal named Jewel (Liv Tyler). For most men, I've pretty much summed up the film's assets. For women? Maybe Matt Dillon does it for you. How do I know?
In all fairness, One Night at McCool's does occasionally succeed outside the boundaries of primal sexual impulses. Michael Douglas plays a hit-man whose hair and wardrobe is a perpetual sight gag. Paul Reiser plays a sleazy lawyer and humbly accepts a role where he's laughed at rather than laughed with. Reiser made me forget about his Mad About You character with a more than competent performance. John Goodman is likeable as a police officer whose wildly inaccurate romantic vision of Jewel is naive, but understandable. Dillon (an underrated actor) demonstrates a wide range of emotions as Jewel's main squeeze. And Jewel herself (Tyler) is pretty confident for a twenty-four-year-old actress. Only Reba McEntire seems out of her league as Reiser's psychiatrist. Then again, the role is underwritten.
One Night at McCool's narrative form didn't impress me. There's a lot of flashbacks and multiple view points that make me believe a straight forward approach would have left us far short of Hollywood's mandatory 90 minutes of footage. The multiple view points also result in annoying repetition of scenes that weren't that great in the first place.
Minor recommendation here for One Night at McCool's.
AWARDS
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