Ok, it's been a while since I've done one of these, so bare with me. This time, I'm giving you the lowdown (or at least my version of it) on a under-appreciated 2002 comedy....

Big Trouble

Starring
Tim Allen
Rene Russo
and so many more fantastic actors...

Directed by the guy who brought Men In Black to the big screen (Barry Sonnenfeld) and based on the book from Dave Barry. If you don't know who Barry is, I feel sad for you, and you should go find out.

Ok, so the premise of the movie is a little hard to explain. Two families, through a strange comedy of errors, end up getting involved in a plot to smuggle a suitcase nuke into the US. I know, doesn't sound very funny, right? Trust me on this.

One family is Tim Allen, an out-of-work newspaper columnist now trying to run an ad agency, and his son (Ben Foster), who's not angry over the divorce, but who thinks his dad is a Geo-driving wimp.

The other is Rene Russo, who's married to a man (Stanley Tucci) who has stolen large sums of cash from his company, and Russo's daughter (Zooey Deschanel) who basically hates everything about her step-dad.

In this film, even though they're playing a somewhat juvenile game called "Killer," the two teens are pretty much the most level-headed and mature characters in the movie.

Ok, now, throw in two contract killers hired because of the money-theft, two Russian bar owners/gun runners, two UNBELIEVABLY stupid petty crooks (Johnny Knoxville and Tom Sizemore), two cops that are cynical and on the border of being bored (Patrick Warburton and Jeanine Garofalo) and one strange but happy homeless guy (Jason Lee) and you're off on a big adventure.

You'll notice I didn't give a lot of details. It's because this movie is too darn funny to ruin it for folks who haven't seen it. One of the reasons it was overlooked is just because of bad timing. The film was being promoted as a late summer-early fall release in 2001. With the climax involving a bomb on a plane, the studio stopped the release after Sept 11. Released in early 2002, the movie kind of went unnoticed. I don't really know that it ever found it's audience, so I'm trying to spread the word.

Any movie that has lines like those below can't be bad, right?

(About Tucci's character) "Arthur Herk. One of the few Floridians who was not confused when he voted for Pat Buchanan."

Eddie (Knoxville) "Let's get the hell outta here, Snake. I think I hear one of them silent alarms."

Eliot Arnold (Allen) "Do you think someone's trying to kill your husband?"
Anna Herk (Russo) "God, I hope so!"

Now, this film is rated PG-13, and it's mostly because of some bad language. As always, it's up to you to judge if kids should watch it, but if they're not prone to repetition of things, it's not overly violent or anything like that (yeah, I know, weird to say about a movie with hired killers, but there it is).

Watch it, enjoy, laugh out loud. I've seen this movie a lot, and I still laugh like it's the first time.