Nora Ephron, in a sort of comic counterpart to A Simple Plan, tells what happens to the people, and those around them, who successfully scam the Pennsylvania State Lottery for six-point-four million, but who then must find somebody else to cash in the ticket: a "beard." It isn't pretty, and it isn't particularly funny either. (The documentary filmmaker and professional sourpuss Michael Moore, neither pretty nor particularly funny himself, is an unexpected piece of casting as the first choice of "beard," a sexually tormented asthmatic oaf.) Ephron only directed. She did not also write the script -- Adam Resnick did -- so the movie lacks the chatty-catty qualities that distinguish and personalize her better efforts. Most of the interest in this one revolves around, or devolves onto, John Travolta, who worked for Ephron in Michael and works his tail off for her here, as a TV weatherman whose dearest ambition is to become a game-show host, but who at the moment is saddled with a snowmobile dealership in the midst of a December heatwave. Some of that interest -- divided between the bratwurstlike, bursting-at-the-seams physique and the self-mocking, campy performance -- is the frankly morbid one of watching him turning into the next William Shatner. With Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, Bill Pullman. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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