Film fails to serve ‘Sara’; ‘Simone’ holds viewer’s interest

‘Serving Sara’ does not dish up many laughs

An absolutely dreadful attempt at comedy, “Serving Sara” is an

insult to anyone with an IQ greater than their shoe size. This inane

film is a wannabe zany farce and road trip movie with gross-out jokes

and a little romance thrown in. But this clunker falls flat on its

face on every count. No laughs, no love, no life.

The first five minutes are mildly amusing and give a hint of what

the movie might have been if it had better writing, directing and

acting. Matthew Perry plays Joe Tyler, a process server worming his

way into an underground gambling den to serve a subpoena on a

mobster. There are a couple of good one-liners, sight gags and snappy

music in this opening scene. But from there, the film becomes its

true self: a painfully unfunny exercise in sophomoric dialogue,

deadpan acting and stupid plot tricks.

The ever-cheerful Elizabeth Hurley plays Sara, the object of Joe’s

next subpoena, involving divorce papers. When she learns her husband

is dumping her, she offers Joe a million bucks to serve papers on the

husband first, so she can gain advantage in court. Thus starts a

mindless trek from New York to Texas that is full of flat jokes and

desperate attempts at humor.

The very few funny moments are totally lost in the monumental

silliness of the whole enterprise. The most desperate gags involve

the bodily and sexual functions of cattle that definitely challenge

the meaning of a PG-13 rating. These are crude and tasteless scenes

that would be much better left on the cutting-room floor.

Perry looks like he is sleepwalking through his lines. Hurley

brings the emotional depth of a cartoon character to her role.

Together they are listless and lifeless with no sparks, no chemistry

and no chance of making this dud work.

“Serving Sara” manages to misfire on every level; a total

embarrassment to everyone involved.

“Serving Sara” is rated PG-13 for crude humor, sexual content and

language.

* JOHN DEPKO is a Costa Mesa resident and a senior investigator

for the Orange County public defender’s office.

‘Simone’ stretches the limits of believability

“Simone” is the title character who isn’t there. In the film, she

springs from the imagination of Hollywood director Viktor Taransky,

played by Al Pacino.

Taransky’s films have not been doing well lately. His current film

is about to crash before it’s even through shooting because his

leading lady (Winona Ryder in a cameo) has just walked off the set.

When studio head Elaine Christian, played by Catherine Keener,

tells Taransky he’s finished, the director is doubly humiliated

because Christian was once his wife. In a moment of desperate

bravado, Viktor claims he has someone much better for the role.

Skipping ahead over several plot developments that may or may not

pass your personal plausibility test, we find Viktor in the midst of

shooting a film that is the talk of the town. He has not only found

an actress who has, shall we say, an otherworldly beauty, but he is

driving all of Hollywood wild by allowing no one to see her. Even her

co-stars have never laid eyes on her. She films all her scenes alone.

This might be a good place to mention that “Simone” was written

and directed by Andrew Niccol, who wrote the script for “The Truman

Show,” a story in which real people went about their lives in an

artificial world.

Truman’s world only had to fool Truman. Here, Niccol has become

more ambitious. His computer-generated film goddess is supposedly

able to fool all of the people all of the time.

At times, the film’s energy seemed to lose momentum. However, I

found the “what if” qualities of the story held my interest and made

me laugh.

“Simone” is PG-13 for some sensuality.

* JUNE FENNER is vice president of a work-force training company.