The Grand 




Written and Directed
by Zak Penn

It's quite obvious that Zak Penn is tiring of superhero movies. Otherwise he wouldn't have decided to do a mockumentery on of all things, poker. Now Poker as a spectator sport has become rather popular [why I don't know, it's worse than golf] and this isn't the first poker movie to come out in recent months. So with pop culture going in that direction, this sort of thing is to be expected. This film is all about the expected.

This is primarily about One Eyed Jack Faro(Woody Harrelson), a permanent resident of a rehab center who's heard that his grandfather's casino is going to be bought by the evil billionaire Steve Lavisch (Michael McKean) if our hero doesn't pay off his megabucks debt within a few days and the only way this is possible is to get into the eponymous poker tournament and win it. He gets in and then the film changes direction slightly to start having profiles on the other players in the tourney.
Lainie(Cheryl Hines) and Larry Schwartzman(David Cross), who are twins, trained by their father(Gabe Kaplan) to be ultra competitive, Deuce Fairbanks(Dennis Farina), a gangster of the old school, The German (Werner Herzog), a nazi of the old school, Mike Werbe (Michael Karnow), who's borderline autistic, and last and least, Andy Andrews (Richard Kind), who likes to play on the internet, and so, following this far-from-merry band the story of the Grand goes on.

Quite simply, the mockumentary has played itself out. Sure this has some good points, but for the most part the jokes fall flat. Ray Romano, as Lainie's husband, is just grating, as is Gabe Kaplin, who at one time was considered a genius. I guess it's Matt Bierman's writing which fails.

This is probably going to come and go faster than an inside straight.

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