The Amateurs

Lorey Sebastian/First Look Studios

Review in a Hurry:  Sad-sack small-towners decide the best way to hit it big is to produce a homegrown porn film, a project that might actually be more watchable than this listless, nth-generation retread of The Full Monty.

The Bigger Picture:  Some things ought to be left to the professionals.

When amiable loser Andy (Jeff Bridges) dragoons his barmates for his latest crackpot scheme—an adult film in which the cast and crew are all locals—the task at hand seems insurmountable. Finding local actors with the proper—ahem—attributes is tough enough, let alone getting the cameras to roll.

Even making bad movies takes a prodigious amount of effort, something anyone who worked on The Amateurs could surely tell you. But hard work just isn't enough, nor is an overweening desire to please much of an actual crowdpleaser.

There's a stellar cast here—Bridges, Tim Blake Nelson, Joe Pantoliano, even Ted Danson—and they've all got a few funny lines. But after the erstwhile pornographers have decided, in a kooky but methodical fashion, what they need to shoot in order to make a respectable stag film, the rest of the story isn't crass or shaggy enough for them to do anything but tap-dance.

Nor is it engrossing enough to involve even the editors, apparently, since Bridges has to string the plot together with an invasive, interminable series of in-character voice-overs that beg the question of why anyone needed to shoot the scenes in the first place.

At a slim-enough 90 minutes, The Amateurs still allows plenty of time to think about these things and to wonder about all the seasoned performers who signed up for this mess: Shouldn't they know better? After all, they're professionals.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  There are a few glimmers of life in the script and some great character-actor performances from Danson, William Fichtner and Glenne Headly. But if you're hoping for titillation value, you should be aware that The Amateurs, like most pornography, is as unsexy as can be.