The Swing of Things

According to IMDb, it took five people to write this movie; judging from the result – a series of unrelated vignettes characterized by half-baked ideas that set up a situation only to immediately drop it –, each wrote their contribution incommunicado from the other four.

We have an adman whose client, played by Jon Lovitz, apparently owns a jetpack company; never mind that jet packs have very few practical and no recreational uses. We also have a woman who designs dog clothing, and puts on a fashion show in her apartment living room for a pet store clerk, a broad dressed as Catwoman (who announces her intention to go to the bathroom by asking where the litter box is), and, for some reason, a Catholic priest, all while her roommate has a loud threesome with two guys wearing the uniform of the Argentine national soccer team. This will be the last time we ever hear about jet packs or doggy fashion, which is probably for the best.

These two individuals meet, and he asks her out; she replies that she has decided to abstain from dating until she has completed her first business transaction (it occurs to me that, were she a prostitute, she could kill two birds with one stone; crude, yes, but still funnier than anything in this movie, which settles on crude, period). Why make her say this, when the very next scene shows them already engaged? Of course, the reason the film doesn't bother with the characters' courtship is because it can't wait to get to Jamaica and quote-unquote delight us with frontal nudity, references to marijuana use, and scatological humor.

Consider this: a group of characters go sailing on a boat, and one of them regales the rest with tales of horny dolphins. Another character falls overboard and is surrounded by dolphins that are as anatomically correct as a CGI dolphin can be – which is not much, but the point is that we can clearly see why these animals are mammals and not fish. A third character dives to the rescue, and... nothing. The movie cuts to the next scene and that's it. We never know if the character is molested by dolphins (once again, that's probably for the better). Here's another example: a character runs into a blonde who, to his surprise, invites him to her hotel room; he gets over his astonishment, they leave together and…nothing. They walk off the frame, the movie cuts to another scene, and that's it.

And so on and so forth. The movie leaves a plethora of loose ends, but the biggest question is, what the hell is Luke Wilson doing in this unholy mess? Did the producers kidnap Owen and held him hostage, and Luke appearing in this debacle was the ransom? I mean, Jon Lovitz I can understand, but Luke Wilson? WTF?