Big Trouble

Director Barry Sonnenfeld moves from bomb (The Wild, Wild West) to bomb in a suitcase with this messy, sometimes funny, sometimes incredibly dull comedy based on Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry’s wacky, mosaic novel. A high-school squirt gun game of “Killer” and a Mafia hit on a businessman set off a chain reaction of events involving Russian arms smugglers, a toad that sprays hallucinogenic body fluid, nitwit ex-convicts, a loser adman, an unhappy wife, goats and a man who lives in a tree. The all-star ensemble includes Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Dennis Farina, Janeane Garofalo, Heavy D, Tom Sizemore, Stanley Tucci and Jason Lee. The finale—featuring a nuclear explosive aboard a plane and the suggestion that the device produced some positive changes in certain peoples’ lives—delayed the film’s original September opening date.