The Amateurs has had a hard time making it to the big screen, considering it wrapped production more than two years ago. As near as I can tell, it might have actually been three years, but don't take my word on that. All I know is that my girlfriend, who works extensively in the industry, said she saw it what felt like a lifetime ago and nobody thought it was any good then. It's 2007 now, almost 2008, and, you know what? I feel the same way.

A feel-good comedy in the vein of British romps like The Full Monty or Calendar Girls, The Amateurs is about the attempts of a small town to produce a high-quality porno in order to help big-time loser Andy Sargentee (Jeff Bridges, AKA box-office poison) do something with his loser-life. Unfortunately, it lacks any of the charm of those British movies I mentioned and, more often than not, feels like a bad USA movie I might have watched in 1991. The irony is, for all that talk, there’s very little nudity. Even network television is more generous than that, which makes no sense since The Amateurs is, again, in case you missed it, about a bunch of small towners trying to make a porno.

After a slow first act, in which Andy unnecessarily narrates his loser-life from a bar, including an inability to impress his son who now lives with his ex-wife and her ridiculously rich husband –while introducing everyone else you’ll see in the movie, characters like Some Idiot (Joe Pantoliano) and Moose (Ted Danson), he concludes, after spotting a lot of T&A in newspaper advertising, that the town should make a porno. A longtime schemer, Andy immediately goes to work researching and, after consuming hundreds of porns, until the point he's bored by them, he presents his mad plan to his local friends, including two middle-aged women who seem to have no role other than to be humorously out of place. With almost no convincing, everyone agrees, ponies up $2,000 apiece to make Andy’s dream happens, and get to work trying to write the script and find willing actors.

At this point, you're probably no longer paying much attention to the movie. I had to keep myself from playing on the Internet while watching the home screener, if only because I figured the writer-director, Michael Traeger, deserved that courtesy. Interestingly enough, though, Traeger attempts to offer up a little Hollywood satire as Some Idiot, an idiot who's only taken one filmmaking class at community college, pens a grandiose porn and Otis (Prison Break's William Fichtner) becomes an executive producer after he asks if there's a job he could do that just involves standing around and watching the movie get made.

It would have worked, too, if Traeger had stopped; instead, the bad insider insight keeps coming, piled on top of lame joke after lame joke. Hell, I haven't even mentioned Moose's storyline, which is to apparently impersonate Mr. Garrison's early South Park denial of his homosexuality, insisting he's a womanizing whore until everyone finally calls him on it.

The movie wraps up so damn perfectly, you almost can’t help but choke on the saccharine sweetness of it all. Apparently, the lesson is, if you attempt to make low-budget porn with nothing but good in your heart, all of your hopes and dreams will come true. Including making your son proud of you. Thanks, Michael Traeger! If only you could've found some way to distill your movie into a Hallmark card, too.

Grade: D+

Recommend (0)

|  Comments (0)

|  Email

|  Share

Share  Facebook Digg del.icio.us