Tomcats Reviews

Say what you will about screenwriter-turned-first-time-director Gregory Poirier: He's done something few lesser mortals will ever dare to do. Poirier has made a movie in which a surgeon first removes a character's cancerous testicle and then (after wacky complications ensue) winds up eating it over coffee. In the wake of such a stunning achievement, criticism seems irrelevant at best. The plot — which Poirier claimed was based on the actions of real people, itself a frightening thought — revolves around a group of callow, longtime friends who go up against each other in a matrimonial betting pool; the last unmarried man will collect the jackpot. All but two of the pals are already wed when down-at-his-heels cartoonist Michael (the alarmingly game Jerry O'Connell) loses fifty grand he doesn't have in a Las Vegas gambling spree. With death by mobster looming, Michael desperately needs to win the bet (which through careful investments is now worth half a million bucks) so he can pay off the casino. Michael's solution? He'll try to marry off the only other remaining bachelor, his obnoxious, womanizing, best bud Kyle (Jake Busey, depressingly typecast) before the casino marker comes due. More of the aforementioned wacky complications ensue, and it will come as no surprise to any sentient mammal that Michael falls for Natalie, the woman he tries to fix Kyle up with, especially since she's played by the fetching Shannon Elizabeth. What will come as a surprise (even in the post-Farrelly Brothers world we all inhabit) is the astonishingly gross and thoroughly implausible lengths to which Poirier's script will go for a cheap laugh. It's hard to say which is most reprehensible: The grandmother/daughter dominatrix tag team subplot, the sight of a Speedo-clad Busey spanking himself, or the fact that Poirier was willing to give a character testicular cancer for no other reason than to set up a dumb sight gag.