It doesn't work for "The Man"

There's not much to say about "The Man" starring Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson. It's a buddy crime picture like "48 Hrs," it's a fish out of water comedy about a neurotic motor-mouth like "Midnight Run," and it has a suave European baddie like "Die Hard." But unlike those movies, it's no good.

Jackson and Levy were definitely great bets for their parts. Each of them manages to make some pretty lame dialogue work, but they can't save a blah (and at times inexplicable) plot. Some guns have been stolen, dental salesman Levy gets mistaken for an arms dealer and he and Jackson are forced to team up. The direction is listless and I was found myself longing for some quick-moving, badly edited Michael Bay-ish action nonsense to relieve the tedium of "banter" with too much time left between witticisms.

One thing I loved about the film: Levy plays a man who sells tooth veneers and other cutting edge oral-enhancement equipment that give Hollywood stars of late those blindingly white teeth that Cheryl Tiegs could only dream about in the seventies. But Levy appears to be the one actor in Hollywood who hasn't given into the pressure for those unnaturally bleached choppers. It was a relief to see a normal, yellowish, crooked smile on a Hollywood star.

I'm sure there are movies I am less interested in seeing than "The Man" right now, but to be perfectly honest I'm not sure what they are.