Latest Testosto-Comedy Worse Than Most

Tomcats

1/2 Star

Has Horatio Sanz ever been funny? As a SNL devotee, I can recall desperately wanting him to help fill the vacuum left when Chris Farley departed.

Unfortunately, his performance in "Tomcats" has made it patently obvious that Sanz has never been funny and might never be funny.

Like Sanz, who plays one of the swinging bachelors in this film, I really wanted "Tomcats" to be funny. It turned out to be one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

One would expect that a film focused on the wild antics of a group of bachelors and including Shannon Elizabeth (whose breasts you may recall from such films as "American Pie" and "Scary Movie") would at least provide some guilty laughs and gratuitous nudity. It does neither.

Director Gregory Poirier continues his one-man assault on the intelligence of the American public with his second atrocious film in under a month. Poirier also penned the script for the David Arquette vehicle "See Spot Run."

The scary thing is that "Tomcats" is actually worse than "See Spot Run" (don't ask me how I know that).

Poirier has obviously studied the classics in the emerging genre of latter-day "Porky's." All the elements that have made films such as "American Pie" and "Road Trip" unexpected successes are present in "Tomcats," from the numerous busty babes to the countless sex jokes.

Unfortunately, something appears to have been lost in the translation. Jokes that should have been scandalous are flat-out disgusting, and jokes aimed at being clever were about as amusing as a monologue from Screech in "Saved by the Bell."

The main character of "Tomcats" (Jerry O'Connell) is a bachelor cartoonist with the charisma of Screech, yet the audience is inexplicably asked to believe that O'Connell is some sort of stud.

The plot, which is always secondary in films like this, involves O'Connell's character trying to repay a large gambling debt by getting his asshole friend (Jake Busey) married within a month. It almost goes without saying, but the plot is wafer-thin and laughably predicable.

I should amend that statement; the plot is almost laughably predictable. It ends up being roll-your-eyes predictable.

One of the biggest problems with "Tomcats" is that it is supposed to be a comedy. If a film of this caliber had been a horror, a science fiction or even better, both (like "Leprechaun 4: In Space"), it could have been a great deal of fun to laugh at.

The problem with bad comedies is that you can't laugh at them because you feel like you're encouraging the film to continue to not be funny.

Instead, the majority of this film is spent in awkward silence as the audience vainly searches for the raunchy humor that made "American Pie" such a guilty pleasure. Unfortunately, however, searching for the "American Pie" in "Tomcats" is like expecting Horatio Sanz to fill Chris Farley's sizable shoes.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.