What do you get when you take “There’s Something About Mary”, add a couple
of murders, some burglary, a handful of big-name stars and a plot structure
like “Rashomon”? Well, you get “One Night at McCool’s”. Yet, for
everything going for it, watching this movie felt like one night is way too
long.
Jewel (Liv Tyler) is a femme fatale, who knows how to strut her stuff, and
of course men grovel at her feet. Then, one late night at a bar called
McCool’s, Randy (Matt Dillon), a bartender, bumps into Jewel. He falls in
love with her at first sight and is enticed by her every movement. They decide to live together and seem to be a happy couple. However, the magic
soon runs out when Randy realizes that Jewel is manipulating him for her
selfish reasons. Jewel needs more than what Randy can offer, so she ropes in Randy’s cousin (Paul Reiser) and a cop (John Goodman) to help her get
what she wants. Things get nasty between the guys, as Jewel tries to score.
Except for the last thirty minutes, this film had me laughing sporadically.
It was more concerned about how alluring Jewel was to these men over and
over again that it forgot to have an engaging story. The film does a
separate, yet interconnected, account of how each guy viewed her, which was
somewhat successful, but yet often distracting. It is not until the end
that the movie ties everything together, and that I gave it credit for.
The overall performance is okay, although Liv Tyler seemed to be a bit flat
(not referring to her bust size of course) to be a femme fatale. She could
strut it alright, but she didn’t have the attitude and charisma. It was fun
though watching Michael Douglas, who also produced “McCool’s”, play a hit man with a slick hick pompadour and a propensity for Bingo.
Like the ever so influential “Pulp Fiction”, this film tries to balance dark
humor and graphic violence, but it doesn’t pull it off.
“One Night at McCool’s” is not totally awful. It could have been a lot
better, and you might just as well stay at home and have a cold beer.
