FilmBlather.com

"It all started one night at McCool's..."

I'm not sure at what point I realized that One Night at McCool's is one of the funniest (non-animated) Hollywood comedies to come around in a long time. I remember watching the opening scenes with an air of indifference, and I remember watching the climax very nearly in hysterics. Here's an "outrageous" dark comedy that pushes the envelope for a purpose rather than for its own sake. Here, too, is a movie that takes advantage of its terrific cast rather than employing them in the service of an idiotic screenplay.

The story is told through the eyes of three different characters; hardly an original concept, but one that works surprisingly well here. Bartender Randy (Matt Dillon), police detective Dehling (John Goodman) and lawyer Carl (Paul Reiser) all fall for the same woman, appropriately named Jewel (Liv Tyler), who may not be what she seems. Randy, who is telling the story to a mysterious character named Mr. Burmeister (Michael Douglas) in a bingo hall, first sees her outside the bar one night, apparently trying to escape from an abusive boyfriend. He "rescues" her, and she goes home with him, only to reveal that the whole thing was a scam and the "boyfriend" is going to come rob his house any minute. In a bizarre turn of events that I won't reveal, they wind up back at the bar, and, with Jewel's encouragement, Randy kills the boyfriend and he and Jewel stay together.

Assigned to the case is Dehling, who suspects Randy but has nothing to go on. He, too, falls for Jewel and assigns himself to be her guardian angel. Soon, he begins to think that Randy is abusing her, and Jewel lets him think that, again, she is being rescued from an abusive relationship.

Meanwhile, Randy's lawyer friend Carl gets the hots for Jewel as well. They have some bizarre sex, and he starts to think that he is her boyfriend. Randy, of course, is clueless of all of this, and is bewildered when Dehling comes to his house and evicts him for abusing his girlfriend.

Amiably goofy stuff, yes, but it needs good execution, and fortunately it gets that aplenty. Newcomer Harald Zwart plays the material with an irreverent, anything-goes style, but the plot is taken seriously. The story has been thought out and put together with a craftsman's precision. Witness the revelation about Douglas's character: it's obvious, yes, but only after it happens. The interlocking story structure avoids the trite, and runs with its concept, providing different points of view on the proceedings but never deteriorating into a gimmick.

There is absolutely no way the film's climax, consisting of a shootout set to "YMCA", should have worked, but amazingly it does. At a time when Hollywood is shrnking away from anything daring in fear of being attacked by politicians, this seemed like a breath of fresh air; only in retrospect, of course. The most surprising thing wasn't even the audacity of it -- it's nothing we haven't seen before, just not lately -- but the fact that I actually cared about the outcome even while laughing hysterically.

One Night at McCool's ends with an exquisite sight gag, though one that has probably been ruined for you by the advertising. The movie's humor is nothing if not dark, but it's dark humor of the exuberant kind; you walk out with a smile on your face rather than a bad taste in your mouth. In a season when a three-hour drama about an event that took less than two hours dominates the multiplex, One Night at McCool's may be the most fun you'll have at the movies.