Got cleavage?
One Night at McCools is The Wrong Man (AKA Lucky Number Slevin) made a decade prior. Namely a film with aspirations of being sexy, cool, clever and different, that is just a little off the mark in every department. Ironic seeing as how the leads Matt Dillon and Liv Tyler could be described in the same way…
Some base facts seem uniform. McCools is a bar, Randy (Dillon) is the bartender, Carl (Paul Reiser) a patron and Dehling (John Goodman) a detective. And the catalyst for all that follows – and all the three aforementioned guys talk about – is a striking redhead with curves all over named Jewel (Liv T).
The film tells three versions of a tale starting from the same point, though each account veers off into wildly different territory depending on the point of view of the narrator. One tells their psychiatrist, another confesses to a priest, and the third chews the ear off an old guy in a bingo hall (Michael Douglas). The only recurring theme is that each tale manages to have Liv Tyler in sexy scenarios and outfits that wouldn’t look out of place on any random Real Housewife.
A buxom Liv Tyler washing a car in her shorty shorts might have sold the trailer (and it isn’t a horrible scene by any means), but it’s the equivalent of a sign at a restaurant proclaiming ‘$6 steak’. It raises interest levels and might have you going in to check it out, but you know there is every chance the rest will be disappointing and cheap. That is indeed the case here; 90 minutes of non-sexy filler, where nothing especially good nor bad happens. A sexy comedy that misses both marks but not sufficiently to deride it nor even remember it a month later (OK beyond the car wash). Unless that is you ever harboured the desire to see Paul Reiser in bondage outfits…
Final Rating – 6 / 10. One Night at McCools might be a forgettable but hardly horrendous 90 minutes, but rest assured it doesn’t warrant repeat business.
