'Tomcats' lacks humor, humanity

By Jeremy Rea
Staff Writer

I did not want to see this movie. At all. However, if I hope to one day legally change my name to Leonard Maltin, "Tomcats" is the type of garbage I'll have to learn to put up with.

Perhaps you've seen previews for this movie. These are ones where a faceless female playfully pushes down on her boxers while a sly announcer boasts, "This is all we can show you!" I suppose this implies that "Tomcats" is outrageous. But if by outrageous they mean "a steaming cesspool of belching pus and bile," then the ad is right on target.

Little more than a painfully unfunny series of loosely related events, "Tomcats" stars failed TV actor Jerry O'Connell as a swingin' bachelor who either seduces or rapes women. I couldn't really tell. Maybe whichever is easier.

Anyhow, seven years ago O'Connell and his gang of costars made a bet that the last man to remain single wins a mutual fund. The fund has since grown to the preposterous amount of $457,000.

After a night of uncontrolled gambling, O'Connell rings up a $51,000 debt at a Las Vegas casino, and unless he coughs up the dough in four weeks, an irritating Bill Maher will murder him. I guess that happens.

Lucky for O'Connell, the only other man left in the marriage competition is shallow womanizer Jake Busey who apparently pines for Shannon Elizabeth, a one-night stand he abandoned on a highway. So O'Connell hunts her down and tries to convince her to marry Busey.

Once writer/director Gregory Poirier has the trifling plot out of the way, he indulges in a number of amazingly dolorous episodes. Each one is contrived solely for its punch line and then shoehorned into the movie at any cost.

For example, wouldn't it be funny if the groomsmen had erections at a wedding? Well, let's make it happen! What if some guy chased a testicle around a hospital before watching it being eaten by a doctor? We can do that!

Further to the shame of his movie, Poirier staunchly believes his setups are riotous and keeps us hanging on as long as possible before delivering the "laugh" with all the surprise of a slow-moving blimp.

Through all of this, the characters drift along delivering lines with all the charisma of a pervert uncle. O'Connell looks ready to crawl out of his skin as Elizabeth vacantly bats her eyes. As for Busey, the sloth child of cocaine reservoir Gary Busey, I suspect he wasn't acting much.

Yet it isn't completely their fault, as Poirier gives them little to do. His misogynistic worldview has little time for affection, emotion or humanity. Unless humanity is laughing at a girl who is repeatedly run over by a golf cart.

Poirier is the kind of bitter little man who laughs every time he hears the word "vulva" and is convinced there's just a little too much love in the world.

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