It's hard to figure out what went wrong. It has a cast constructed almost entirely of people who were good in funny movies in the recent past. Amanda Peet was great in The Whole Nine Yards. Of course she was awful in Whipped, so perhaps that first movie was a fluke. Jason Biggs was funny in American Pie but then went on to star in critically abused movies like Boys and Girls and Loser, so again maybe that was a fluke. Jack Black was awesome in High Fidelity. Was this a movie that exposes a fluke? I hope not.
On the bright side, R. Lee Ermey and Amanda Detmer work very well in supporting roles. Maybe they should have been the stars because they brought a lot more to the table than the big names. Ermey plays a psychotic football coach imprisoned for killing a referee with a yardage marker. He brings a screen presence that more than matches up with that description. Detmer is sweet and funny as Biggs' lost high school sweetheart, now on the verge of becoming a nun. She easily manages the swing between those two states. Jason Biggs regurgitates the same role we've seen from him before. The same can be said of Zahn, though not as good. Black tries very hard but simply has nothing to work with. Amanda Peet's performance is most notable for the gravity defying cleavage of her costumes.
The story even seems to hold promise. Darren (Biggs), Wayne (Zahn) and J.D. (Black) are lifelong buddies. J.D. isn't too bright, Wayne was a wannabe athlete and Darren was a male cheerleader. In other words, these boys were not among the social elite. Now they hold down (barely) lame jobs and spend their spare time in a Neil Diamond cover band. Darren meets a new girl Judith (Peet) who completely dominates him. Wayne and J.D. are horrified that their friend no longer hangs out with them and start plotting to get her out of his life.
They start with a simple plan and it fails, so they try something more daring and it fails and so on and so on. The entire story continues to escalate into weirder and weirder directions. Now on the surface this sounds like a perfect formula for comedy and you'd be right. The problem is that the movie always seems to pull its punches. It never goes for the jugular, preferring to aim for small laughs. The laughs are there but it seemed to promise more and not deliver.
It could be that it's a little hard to accept them as real characters. How could Darren be so wimpy? Could Wayne and J.D. be quite so dim? And who in their right mind worships Neil Diamond? Every character has a bizarre back story that seems to put the whole group in some twisted alternate universe. The best jokes are grounded in reality. This movie quickly distances itself from reality which probably has a lot to do with why the jokes never seem to have much punch.
Saving Silverman amounts to a light comedy. It's by no means a must see movie but might be worth a matinee. Perhaps the biggest disappointment though is that one of the jokes in the trailer is much funnier than the joke in the movie. Never a good sign.
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