An adaptation of the "unauthorized autobiography" of Chuck Barris, TV game-show producer -- The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, et al. -- and moonlighting CIA hit man. Says him. We meet the protagonist (played with maximum smarm and supreme sleaze by Sam Rockwell) holed up, Manson-haired, naked, close to catatonic, in a New York fleabag in 1981, where, with what will prove to be his customary grandiosity, he decides to hammer out on a manual typewriter the details of his "wasted life" as a "cautionary tale." The genre that would better fit what unfolds is the "fish story." First-time director George Clooney, overseasoning and overcooking like a culinary amateur, certainly makes his presence felt, as well as actually seen in the role of the CIA recruiter. What the actor-slash-director seems to be banking on is the spectator's starry-eyed goodwill. And in truth, the cronyism whereby Clooney's cohorts from Ocean's Eleven, Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, pop up in bit parts as passed-over contestants on The Dating Game, and then Julia Roberts in a bigger part as a Garbo-hatted Mata Hari, will no doubt tickle the sillies in attendance. It might even give them the "inside" feeling of being cronies themselves. (Application for change of name: George Crony.) Even so, goodwill will be sorely tested. The amount of time allotted to the hit-man sideline -- Barris claims to have combined his Dating Game chaperon duties with his assassination assignments in "romantic" places like Helsinki -- makes it impossible to shrug off the claim as an idle boast. The cloak-and-daggerism recalls the equally preposterous espionage bits in A Beautiful Mind, and you must concede, at the very least, that this movie springs the bigger surprise in that these bits turn out not to be delusions. It is difficult, though, to gain much perspective on a life from a vantage of disbelief. Drew Barrymore, Rutger Hauer. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd