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If you had to name a film that was in hot water, one contender would definitely be Disney’s Big Trouble. Aggressively advertised, the folks at Disney looked like they had a winner on their hands. Adapted from the wildly popular Dave Barry novel, directed by a blockbuster director, with a who’s who of ‘90s comedians ensemble, Big Trouble looked to score big dough. What went wrong? Well, the climax of the film involves hijacking a plane with a WMD that is seconds away from exploding while in flight. As bad luck might have it, the film’s release date was September 21st... 2001. Yikes!

Quicker than you could say the movie’s title, Disney yanked the film from being released and advertised. No matter which way you cut it, Disney’s choices were to sit on the film for a few years, until the tragedy of the event would start to heal or dump it six months later as a tax write-off. The latter option was selected.

Still, I was interested in the film. The trailer looked funny. I love ensemble casts, and really wanted to see the controversially released ending. With a big cast, a big time director, a big tangle of a plot, and a not so big running time of 85 minutes, the one thing Big Trouble lacks in size is the most important – laughs.

Big Trouble takes place over the course of around two days in the diverse city of Miami, following an eccentric group of intersecting characters. Tim Allen gets the most screen time as Eliot Arnold, a Pulitzer Prize winning ex-Miami Herald columnist (same as Dave Barry) turned failing advertising executive. Eliot’s increasingly pathetic life gets a quick turnaround after a quickie with Anna Herk (Rene Russo), the mother of Jenny (Zooey Deschanel) who is the assigned Super Soaker target to Eliot’s son (Ben Foster), in a high school game called Assassin. Meanwhile, Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler play two real assassins hired to take out Anna’s husband, Arthur (Stanley Tucci), for skimming money from the company where he works. However, what Arthur really loves doing is sucking the toes of his Mexican housemaid (Sofia Vegara) who has a passion for a Frito-loving tree dweller named Puggy (Jason Lee). And this is barely 15 minutes in!

The film is less of a plot but more of an unfolding of events caused by a Domino-effect of increasing absurdity. Then there are also two Russian weapons dealers (remember pre-9/11 where you had to have a thick Russian accent to be a cinematic terrorist?) who front as bar owners (Daniel London and Lars Arentz-Hansen), two idiotic criminals (Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville), and two cops (Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton) who constantly cross paths with all of the characters.

With enough plot points to make a three-hour movie, let alone one with almost a third of that running time, Big Trouble is not as convoluted as one might think. However, it is awfully shallow. While character development is not as important in a comedy as a drama, what we get here are stick figures with one trait, clashing into each other to make funny, extravagant fiascoes (Goats on the highway! Airport chase! A run-for-cover scramble where people keep falling over each other!).

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