Lame tag line but I like the look of the poster.I've owned this movie for a few years now. I got it for $3 or $4 before I signed up for Netflix and was willing to take chances like that. You know how sometimes you watch a movie and you just can't decide if you liked it or not? That's how this one was for me. It's got a great cast and it's weird but something about it just doesn't gel for me.
Frank Sangster (Steve Martin) is a dentist with everything going for him. He's got a beautiful fiancee/dental assistant (Laura Dern) and a thriving practice. Then a beautiful stranger (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up and scams him out of all his prescription narcotics and his ne'er-do-well brother (Elias Koteas) crashes at his place. Suddenly, strait-laced Frank is lying to the DEA and trying to get his drugs back, which means a tense confrontation with Duane, the femme fatale's permanently angry, and implied incestuous, brother (Scott Caan).
Then Duane shows up dead at Frank's place.
I love noir, and I love good riffs on noir and, on the surface, a dentist involved in a murder mystery should be ticking all the right boxes. It just falls flat, though. Maybe because The Whole Nine Yards did the exact same shtick and did it better just the year before. There's not enough comedy to make it a spoof, there's not enough suspense to make it a drama, and it's laughably easy to figure out who the villains are.
If this movie were an animal, it would be the runt of the litter and everybody knows what happens to them in the wild.
Also, this is my 300th post. Yay!
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