Friday, April 11, 2008

Movie review: The Grand

By John P. Meyer

The Grand

Set around an international poker tournament. A middle-aged guy goes all-in to save his dead grandfather's hotel-casino from a real estate developer. His master plan is to win the world's most famous high stakes tournament, the Grand Championship of Poker.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on The Grand

You may end up agreeing with me that The Grand becomes somewhat tedious by the time its end credits roll (104 minutes into the proceedings), but that pill goes down easier thanks to the film's conceptual freshness and the enthusiasm of its quirky ensemble cast.

Basically, The Grand is an fictionalized, hyperbolic sendup of the kind of high-stakes poker tournaments you see on ESPN or The Travel Channel, offering the additional feature of a behind-the-scenes look at the oddball characters who participate in them. Tipping things further into the plus column are the appearances of celebs we rarely see on camera, such as Gabe Kaplan (Mr. Kotter) and - amazingly - director Werner Herzog (playing a character known enigmatically as "The German").

To clear up any misunderstanding before it has a chance to gel, Mr. Herzog did not direct this little exercise in improvisational mockumentary - that honor goes to a chap named Zak Penn, whose only prior claim to directorial fame stems from a previous mock-doc, Incident at Loch Ness (2004). Interestingly, Herr Herzog starred in that production as well, leading one to wonder what sort of special connection Mr. Penn might have with the notoriously driven auteur.

Deuce Fairbanks, Harold Melvin and Yakov Achmed await the river

In the present production, Woody Harrelson stars as Jack Faro (known to his poker opponents as "One-Eyed Jack"). Jack's granddad (whose ghost is played in a hilarious cameo by Barry Corbin) owned and operated the Rabbit's Foot Casino and Hotel on the Vegas strip; when granddad cashed in his chips, he left the place to Jack. Jack's wanton ways (drugs, booze, women... Jack's been married 70-some-odd times, we learn) have led to the property being sold off to a big corporate developer (think The Donald). Zoned-out self-important billionaire Steve Lavisch (played by Christopher Guest stable player Michael McKean) plans to build a vast shiny twin tower of a structure on the site designed to house A SINGLE GUEST ROOM - at a rental fee of $1 million per night. (How the high-rolling hotel guest will make use of both towers simultaneously becomes the subject of spirited debate.)

Jack leaves the rehab facility where he's spent the last two years in order to enter the Grand Championship of Poker, a $10 million winner-take-all event, in the hopes of regaining control over his granddad's pride and joy before Lavisch can dynamite the place. To win, he'll have to beat out a couple hundred other hot-handed card sharps, and here's where the fun comes in.

Interspersed among the fictional poker pros in the cast are real ones, such as "Texas Dolly" Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth and Daniel Negreanu. Joining these already eccentric characters at the tournament tables are a range of yet weirder ones, including poker-playing siblings Larry and Lainie Schwartzman (David Cross and Cheryl Hines), loosely modeled after real-life poker folk Howard Lederer and Annie Duke. The aforementioned Mr. Kaplan plays Larry and Lainie's dad, Seth Schwartzman, who doesn't take a hand in the tournament but malingers in the wings holding up a sign that says "Go Lainie!"

Lainie Schwarzman considers a bet

Other tourney favorites: veteran Vegas tough guy Deuce Fairbanks (played with sneering contempt by Dennis Farina); Harold Melvin (Chris Parnell), a socially handicapped savant who knows how to calculate the odds; and Richard Kind (another Chris Guest vet) as Andy Andrews, a wide-eyed neophyte player who makes it into the big-time on the basis of his win via the Party Poker website.

Providing color commentary is fake TV announcer Mike Werbe (Michael Karnow), who touts his bogus poker handbook at every opportunity during the course of calling the on-table action. Amusingly, Werbe proves unable to do even basic math; one of his primary tips for players is to "learn the cards - all of them."

I could go on and on with the cast list (Ray Romano as Lainie's husband, who plays fantasy football in an unpaid professional capacity; Jason Alexander as a mysterious poker honcho named Dr. Yakov Achmed; Hank Azaria as a member of an aggressive four-man poker "crew"; Shannon Elizabeth as Lavisch's assistant Toni, who does a brief stint as Jack's bedmate), but you get the point: we're talking big cast, lots of distractions. You get the feeling that if the participants had been pared down by half, this whole thing would feel tighter and more like a movie than an extended, out-of-control SNL episode.

I should mention that the dialog is unscripted; there were 29 pages of story outline provided to participants, and everyone improvised from there. The poker play itself appears genuinely randomized, with some major players being knocked out of the contest earlier than one might expect.

In summary, the big blind may be a bit steep, but for anyone who enjoys the game of poker or gets a kick out of observing the oddball antics and props employed by high-profile players, The Grand might very well be worth the buy-in.

MEMORY LOSS: "Yes, I did get thrown out of my own casino. I'm not sure how that happened, but they say I gave the order." - Jack Faro

KNOW THYSELF: "If you don't see a sucker sittin' around this table, you're it." - Deuce Fairbanks

HOW IRONIC: "Las Vegas is a place that has no irony." - The German

Related stories

• New on DVD: The Bucket List, The Grand and Otis (June 10, 2008)
• Pegasus News Week in View: No VIPs at SOBs edition (April 17, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Movies / Film > Independent Films