Saving Silverman

This battle-of-the-sexes burlesque is so idiotic, contrived and inept that there's almost no chance a worse movie will be released all year. The very concept--two slackers (career scene-stealers Jack Black and Steve Zahn) trying to save a completely whipped buddy (annoying dork Jason Biggs) from marrying his harpy girlfriend (Amanda Peet)--demands such utterly unsympathetic characters to even get off the ground that you can't help but hate everyone onscreen. Why should we root for some lily-livered bozo whose lips are so SuperGlued to his girlfriend's buttocks that he gives up his two best friends because she threatens to withhold sex if he doesn't? Director Dennis Dugan (Big Daddy) desperately milks every dumb plot device--like the fact that Biggs' alternative sexy sweetheart (Amanda Detmer) is about to become a nun--for cheap laughs that never come. Tactless, arduous, irritating, unoriginal, blunderingly directed, and sporting not even one funny moment, this is not recommended. (R. Blackwelder)