I saw this movie for one reason and one reason alone: Bruce Campbell, King Of All B-Movie Actors, plays a bit part. Therefore, there's only one logical response to this mess -- it needed a lot more Bruce to be bearable.
"Serving Sara" is standard-issue romantic comedy fluff. It's got textbook generic comedy plot 14a: jaded guy learns to feel and falls for victimized girl, ultimately helping her to fight back. That sums it up pretty well, but to be fair, there's a little bit more to it.
Joe Tyler (Matthew Perry) is a hard-boiled New York City process server assigned to deliver divorce papers to a loyal wife, Sara Moore (Elizabeth Hurley). Her Texas millionaire playboy husband Gordon Moore (Bruce Campbell) wants to get rid of her, using conservative Texas divorce laws when she is out of town on a trip.
Sara decides to turn the tables and bribes Joe to serve her husband divorce papers instead, using the New York divorce laws that would guarantee her a fairer share of his fortune. The film becomes a race between process servers to see who can serve whom first, with lots of dirty tricks and deception along the way.
I thought they gave up on making lame romantic comedies with "Friends" stars three years ago. They never set the box office on fire and critics trash them pretty universally. Even hardcore "Friends" fans are hard-pressed to defend garbage like "Ed" and "Almost Heroes" (remember those?).
Still, "Serving Sara" isn't unbearably awful for every single second of its lengthy running time. There are a few five- to 10-minute stretches where it actually gets compelling and even suspenseful. "Sara" is basically a cross-country chase movie and it works once in a while.
But the movie just blows it every time you're about to start enjoying it. Several extended gags are just plain ugly, dumb or dragged on for way too long. Most of the punch lines to jokes or attempts at witty statements tend to induce squirming and discomfort in the audience rather than laughter.
There are a couple uncredited cameos that fall pretty flat (I swear that sleazy motel manager looked uncannily like Mike Judge), but the smaller roles are generally what make the film bearable.
Cedric the Entertainer is pretty good as Joe's long-suffering boss. He believably blows his stack over and over again and he's got a few sharp off-the-cuff lines. Vincent Pastore is also quite good as Joe's nasty competitor, out to serve Sara. It goes without saying that Bruce Campbell's great as the sleazy millionaire. His southern-fried accent is always funny, if not believable. I'd rather see him in a fourth "Evil Dead" film, but it's good to see he's working. Hope the pay was good.
Perry has flashes of effective acting here and there, but by and large, he seems to be as uncomfortable in the movie as the audience is in the theater. He's just not believable enough as a jerk to suspend disbelief and make the audience hate him. He's just annoying a lot of the time.
Hurley's okay. She has charisma and some moments where she gets to lash out with humorous results. Her wardrobe will probably keep the adolescent male crowd somewhat attentive, but others will be tempted to take a walk to the theater's "Exit" door before the film is over.
Someone at Paramount must have slipped the MPAA a $20 bill to get "Sara" a PG-13 rating. A graphic gag involving Matthew Perry's arm and a bull's gluteus maximus is funny for about two seconds, then as it goes on and on, it starts to look really ugly and unfunny. The profanity is fast and furious too. A decade ago, the MPAA slapped a Martin Lawrence stand-up routine with an NC-17 for saying some of the stuff in here.
The filmmakers definitely deserve credit for keeping the romantic tension latent. There are several opportunities for Sara and Joe to get freaky together, but it doesn't happen. The restraint shown there makes it less cheap in at least that respect.
There's no real reason to watch this movie, but at least I can say that it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
1 star out of 5
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