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| Directed by Jeff Pollack; Starring David Spade, Sophie Marceau, Patrick Bruel, Artie Lange, Mitchell Whitfield, Martin Sheen, Jon Lovitz, Estelle Harris, Rose Marie, Marla Gibbs, and Carol Cook |
You know the film will be great when it is directed and co-written by the man who brought us Bootie Call. Lost & Found serves as the anti-There’s Something About Mary. Not that the films differ in context (the director picks up more Mary-esque sequences than DePalma has picked up from Hitchcock), the big difference was that Mary was funny this is not. I guess the success of Mary should have warned me of things like this to come, but for some reason I didn’t think I would be as put off by this film as I actually am. I have always skipped films like this before (re Dirty Work, Half Baked, Almost Heroes, Chairman of the Board) and I’m beginning to wish I had skipped this.
This stupid Spade vehicle follows his attempts to woo his new neighbor (Braveheart co-star Marceau) by forcing her to have a reason to spend time with him. His great plan to get this is by stealing her dog and then going on the search for him with her. From there we get everything from unfunny jokes about look alike stalkers to really unfunny jokes about dog fices. The film goes as far as having a Robert Redford based “dog whisperer” (Lovitz).
I think it is kind of sad that Marceau, who was very good as the princess in Braveheart, has been forced to sink this low in American films. Her last film was Firelight from France, a much much better film and proving that Americans do not know what to do with foreigners when we find a good one (Guy Pierce and Robert Carlyle in Ravenous). The only person that seems to know what to do is Jackie Chan who just sits back and redubs some of his older films (though he did sink as low as doing Rush Hour). What’s even sadder is this film’s misportrayal of There’s Something About Mary. I was one of the many that came to the defense of the little comedy when it opened to small ticket sales, so it has a slight bond to me. Seeing this film nearly steal its ending and completely ripping off its closing credits only made this film plummet in my rating book. I can think of no rating that suits this film better.
