OxfordPress.com

Grade: D

Verdict: Someone should be sued for this movie.

Details: Starring Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley. Directed by Reginald Hudlin. Rated PG-13 for crude humor, sexual content and language. One hour, 40 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: Crass and joyless, "Serving Sara" would have been an unfortunate movie anyway. But it's also the victim of unfortunate timing.

It stars Matthew Perry as a process server who dreams of owning a Napa Valley vineyard and makes his own wine in his apartment. It's a sad irony watching him sample his concoctions, knowing that his much-publicized stint in rehab early last year forced production on "Serving Sara" to shut down for several weeks.

A more serious problem: Jokes that wouldn't have been funny before Sept. 11 are painfully uncomfortable now.

Perry's character, Joe, and Sara (Elizabeth Hurley), a wealthy woman to whom he was supposed to serve divorce papers, team up to salvage her share of her cattle baron husband's fortune, and end up being chased through Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

They jump onto a baggage conveyor belt and bang around with the luggage, just to set up a sight gag in which Sara's jeans rip. She ends up in her panties, scavenging through people's suitcases for something to wear, before throwing together an ensemble consisting of a tight black T-shirt, a naughty schoolgirl skirt and cowboy boots.

That's the punch line. It's hard to laugh, though, because the scene is such a glaring anachronism in these days of heightened airport security. (The movie finished shooting in May 2001.)

Later, Sara's husband, Gordon (Bruce Campbell), tries to avoid having divorce papers served on him by hiding in the audience at a monster truck show. (It's loud and obnoxious — the only reason for the setting.) Joe gets the crowd to move away from Gordon by flashing his photo on the Jumbotron and announcing over the loudspeaker that he has the Ebola virus.

Everyone runs screaming, and crews from the Centers for Disease Control move in to investigate, dressed in protective suits. There's nothing funny about this after last year's anthrax scare, but it wouldn't have been sidesplitting humor before that, either.

The dialogue from first-time screenwriters Jay Scherick and David Ronn consists of insults hurled back and forth--none of which can be printed here. The movie also wastes talented character actors like Vincent Pastore and Jerry Stiller by relegating them to one-note roles. It relies on gross-out jokes about cow patties and impotent bulls, and telegraphs them a mile away. And it perpetuates stereotypes about Texans and New Yorkers, Hispanics and Italians.

Then, director Reginald Hudlin ("House Party") has the audacity to turn the movie into a romance. We're supposed to believe that Joe and Sara's shared greed has turned to love, which manifests itself in the form of tentative kisses in a hotel suite, with a soft-rock soundtrack and a bubble bath waiting in the background.

But there's nothing appealing about either of them — no matter how attractive they may be. Sara, by the way, has perfect makeup even when she wakes in the morning, and at one point avoids receiving her divorce papers by hiding in an Estee Lauder spa, the cosmetics company for which Hurley's been a spokeswoman for years, with far greater success than she's had as an actress.

Perry, meanwhile, has said he was drawn to the movie because he wanted to play a more dramatic role than that of Chandler, his character on NBC's "Friends" for the past eight years. Watching Rachel give birth at the end of last season had more drama than this.

— Christy Lemire, The Associated Press