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HOLLYWOOD  HOMICIDE
by Rachel Deahl
Review Film Critic

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Billed as both a comedy and a thriller (depending on which week you caught
its trailer), "Hollywood Homicide" is a buddy cop picture looking for a
punch line and a plotline. Scattered and fractured, the entire picture is
hung on the thin chemistry between stars Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett.
Needless to say, the sparks never quite fly and the laughs never gel.

Pulling a slipshod story from the mass of headlines about LAPD involvements
in the rap industry, particularly in the deaths of Tupac Shakur and The
Notorious B.I.G., "Hollywood Homicide" has its mismatched team of
detectives investigating a gang-style murder at an L.A. nightclub.

When a group of rappers is gunned down in cold blood, Ford and Hartnett are
dispatched to investigate and find the killer. The trail soon leads to a
high-profile record label exec (a more articulate, docile take on Suge
Knight played by the polished Isaiah Washington). The final kicker is that
said exec doesn't take kindly to his talent getting early releases from
their contracts.

Unfortunately director Ron Shelton (whose most notable writing/directing
credit is "Bull Durham") doesn't know where to take this story. Without
investing much effort or originality in the action/suspense angle (think
stale car chases and a tiny suspect pool), he focuses too much of his
attention on the supposedly complicated personal lives of his detectives.

Veteran Joe Galivan (Ford) is a seasoned P.I. who has moonlighted as an
entrepreneur and is now trying to make an extra buck in the real estate
business. (The best running gag in the film has Ford drumming up sales with
his suspects - wealthy rap musicians and music execs).

Saddled with an unappealing property that he can't get off his hands, Joe
is constantly juggling his police work with his side gig, all the while
trying to dig himself out of debt. His younger counterpart, K.C. (Hartnett)
is a suave but confused kid who also spends his off-duty hours exploring
other careers. Secretly teaching yoga to beautiful women (both for the sex
and the good karma) and with dreams of becoming an actor, K.C. is a kind of
crunchy playboy confused on and off the job.

Sadly the interpersonal struggles of our private dicks never seem as
pressing or interesting as they should. After awhile the insistent
references to Joe's crappy realtor skills and K.C.'s odd desire to act
(he's practicing for a role as Stanley in a local performance of "Streetcar
Named Desire") become distracting. When it ends up that Joe and K.C. just
happen to be investigating the same cop who was responsible for the death
of K.C.'s dad, also a cop, the seminal murder plot becomes as tepid as the
side storylines.

Amid the swirl of Hollywood anecdotes and cameos (Eric Idle and Robert
Wagner are among the stars who appear, briefly, as themselves), it seems
like Shelton had higher designs for "Hollywood Homicide." Whether trying
for satire or a more insightful, darker take on the idiosyncrasies of L.A.
and the film industry that drives and envelops it, Shelton never taps into
these ideas.

Neither as amusing as a "Get Shorty" or insightful as an "L.A.
Confidential," "Hollywood Homicide" finally comes off as a failed attempt
at "Lethal Weapon" which ends up looking more like a poorly done
"Showtime."
Finally Shelton inadvertently proves one of the most well known truths
about Tinseltown: originality is too often discarded (or mistaken) for
window-dressing.

Grade: C-

ALEX & EMMA

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Rob Reiner once carried the romantic comedy hopes & aspirations not just of
his generation but of Hollywood as a whole.

Unfortunately, with this latest outing, the dream is officially dead.
Rehashing the best moments of his lauded entry in the genre, "When Harry
Met Sally," with no success, the director's latest effort falls hopelessly
flat.
Positing Kate Hudson's prudish stenographer as muse to Luke Wilson's
blocked writer, "Alex & Emma" attempts to drum up romantic yuks by pulling
the familiar trick of playing life against art imitating life.

Wilson's promising young author, unable to finish his sophomore effort, is
running scared from the Cuban mafia after gambling away his advance. Now,
holed up in his shabby Boston apartment, he's thirty days away from his
deadline and his promised death.

His only hope is to deliver the manuscript and the corresponding check to
the bookies. Of course when said bookies drop by and burn the chump's
computer in a demonstration of the wrath to come (you know it's a romantic
comedy when the thugs break someone's laptop instead of their legs), our
hero is suddenly in need of someone who knows shorthand.

Hudson shows up at his door with all the pent-up sexuality of Meg Ryan's
virginal Sally, sans the charm. Unfortunately Hudson's Emma has none of the
quirkiness that made Ryan so irresistible in Reiner's pitch-perfect prior
effort.
Everything about Ryan's Sally that made her a quintessentially lovable
prig, from her intolerable need to order meals with sauces on the side to
her willingness to fake an orgasm in public exists in Emma, but less
notably.

Emma's strange food fixation is that she peels her tomatoes and her raciest
attempt at standing up her male conquest/competitor is when she loosens up
enough to spend an afternoon around town with him. Oddly enough, Emma even
picks up a trait from Harry - she reads the last page of a book first, to see
if it's worth reading.

The bulk of "Alex & Emma" is spent in the dull fiction being spun by the
second-rate author hero. Regurgitating his novel like it was last night's
dinner; Wilson's Alex blurts out a yarn about a guy like himself who gets
trapped in a love triangle while vacationing on a ritzy New England island.

Setting his book in the roaring '20s, Alex's doppelganger, Adam Shipley,
goes to the fictional St. Charles to tutor the children of a wealthy French
heiress. When said heiress turns out to be gorgeous, Adam is smitten.
Things become complicated when Adam also falls for the sweet and cute maid
(played by Hudson).

Drawing more from his own life than he should, Alex continually amends his
story to mirror his own unfolding drama. As Emma becomes more appealing and
less offensive in real life, her character morphs accordingly - she changes
from a Swede named Ylka to a German named Elsa to a Spaniard named Eldora
and finally an American dubbed Anna.
Without any of the whip-smart dialogue that Reiner is known for, "Alex &
Emma" is as
familiar as it is tired.

The tepid lead characters, housed by actors who don't even share any
chemistry, finally have nowhere to go in a film as flat as its interior
dime-store novel.

Grade: B-

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