'Guy Thing' shies away from its promising premise

Friday, January 17, 2003

By SEAN AXMAKER
SPECIAL TO THE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The "guy" thing of "A Guy Thing" is the unspoken pact between men that, since they all cheat and spin panicked lies to cover their tracks, it's up to all of them to back up those stupid little stories, no questions asked.

MOVIE REVIEW

A GUY THING

DIRECTOR: Chris Koch

CAST: Jason Lee, Julia Stiles, Selma Blair, James Brolin

RUNNING TIME: 101 minutes

RATING: PG-13 for language, crude humor, some sexual content and drug references

WHERE: Cinema Stadium 17, Crossroads, Everett 9, Factoria, Galaxy Tacoma 6, Gateway 8, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Longston Place Stadium 14, Marysville Cinema 14, Monroe 12, Mountlake 9, Pacific Place, Parkway Plaza Stadium 12, Redmond Town Center, Renton Village, Woodinville 12

GRADE: C+

That promising premise, sewn through a film about wedding jitters and second thoughts, might have resulted in a clever little comedy. When Karen (Selma Blair), the sweet, safe fiancée of Paul (Jason Lee), finds a pair of exotic women's underwear (not hers) hidden in the bachelor apartment, that pact goes into action with a comic inspiration the film never again reaches.

The rest is simply a Hollywood thing (set and partially shot in Seattle), your basic romantic farce of a sweet but mismatched couple barreling toward the wedding date just as the groom finds his Ms. Right. In this case it's fun-loving Becky (Julia Stiles), the goofy klutz of a dancing girl that Paul meets cute at his bachelor party, and then wakes up the next morning to find sharing his bed.

The usual complications ensue, most of them involving the frantic and increasingly impractical efforts of Paul to hide incriminating evidence from the classy Karen while hiding his increasing attraction to the impulsive and unpredictable Becky, who just happens to be Karen's cousin.

In movie biz parlance, this is what's known as high concept, and as so often happens, it's executed as low comedy: bathroom gags, drug humor and lots of squirmy on-the-spot embarrassment. These gags aren't so much written as plotted like open-ended sketches and often end without a punch line.

While it displays precious little originality or ingenuity, "A Guy Thing" is less graceless than most of its ilk and benefits from a likable cast. Lee is an amiable (if not quite charismatic) lead, Stiles tends to overplay her comic reactions but is kittenish and quick as the bohemian spirit who can't keep a job, and Blair maintains grace and dignity as the dream-girl foil. They spark their underwritten characters well past the modest ambitions of this underachieving comedy.