The House Bunny

Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Elegy

Bottle Shock

Pineapple Express

Step Brothers

Brideshead Revisited

Tropic Thunder

The Dark Knight

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Hancock

Wanted

If you consider celebrity poker TV tournaments to be must-see entertainment, you'll want to check out the poker-centric comedy The Grand. This largely improvised ensemble piece, squarely in the tradition of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show, packs a killer cast of both the usual, and some unusual, suspects, among them: Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Cheryl Hines, Dennis Farina, David Cross, Richard Kind, Hank Azaria, Mike Epps, Jason Alexander, Gabe Kaplan, director Werner Herzog, plus a couple of cameos we'll leave it to others to spoil. The bigger name cast members play a rogues' gallery of poker aces competing for a $10 million jackpot. According to writer-director Zak Penn, known for his X-Men movie scripts, the big game we see in the movie is completely unscripted, with the movie's finale determined by the break of the cards.

The Grand gets off to a roaring start, with Harrelson enjoying a comic field day as a druggy, womanizing Vegas hotel owner frantic to save the casino built by his legendary late uncle (the wonderfully crusty Barry Corbin) and coveted by batty, avaricious, Trump-like billionaire-developer played by Guest regular Michael McKean. Scoring in a major way, too, Saturday Night Live alumnus Chris Parnell is consistently original and hilarious as a brilliant, depressive player anchored by the philosophy of Dune and his long-suffering mother (Estelle Harris).

For one of these improvisational flicks to truly hit the heights, a couple of the players need to reach the out-of-the-park levels attained by Guest, McKean and Harry Shearer in This is Spinal Tap, or Fred Willard and Jennifer Coolidge in Best in Show. Nobody in The Grand quite hits that comic sweet spot and, about an hour in, the movie lags. Still, there's plenty here to enjoy even if most of the laughs never quite reach the level of Guest at his brilliant best.

by Stephen Rebello

Photos: Courtesy Anchor Bay Entertainment