My wife and I rented “Big Trouble” recently. You may remember what happened to this movie – it was made from a hysterically funny first novel by Dave Barry (the book was funnier than I expected, and I had pretty high expectations given that Barry is the funniest man alive), but because the plot revolved around a nuclear bomb on the loose in an American city (well, Miami, anyway), the film’s projected release in fall 2001 had to be pushed back to the spring, and the movie bombed (so to speak) at the box office.
Go rent it. It’s not as good as the book – it’s always hard to live up to the book – but it’s mostly faithful to the book and a very funny film. It’s also wall to wall with familiar faces – Tom Sizemore from ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ Janeane Garafolo, Stanley Tucci from ‘Big Night,’ Puddy from Sienfeld, Dennis Farina from ‘Crime Story’, Andy Richter from the Conan O’Brien show – which is one reason I’m sure the studio was crushed that it failed. Tim Allen actually has surprisingly little comedic heavy lifting to do as the star; he mostly plays the straight man. In a way, we’ve moved on to living with the terrorist threat to the point where maybe it’s not so bad to laugh at the dark humor of ‘Big Trouble.’ If you can get past that, it’s a very funny movie.