My Giant

Acting agent Sammy Kamin travels to Romania to see his one (and only) client on the set of a low budget American film. When he is fired by the actor he drives off in a rage and crashes his car only to be saved by a Romanian shepherd and taken to a monastery. When he sees his saviour is 7ft10" tall he realises the potential and gets him a job on the local movie. Together the pair set out for America – Max wanting to find the only girl ever to care for him (25 years ago) and Sammy eyeing a key part for Max as a bad guy in the new Steven Seagal movie.

I love Billy Crystal. When he is on form he is very funny and can make even average romantic comedies worth watching. He alone makes it worth sitting through an overlong Oscar ceremony when he comperes it. However this film is beyond his saving grasp as it is simply just not funny enough. The plot (and humour) is basically `oh look- here's a really tall guy'. The worst thing is that it then goes into cloying sentimentality every five minutes as Sammy learns to love again through the spirit of his gentle giant. And up comes the music that every Crystal film seems to use for `touching' moments.

At the start of the film is a scene where Sammy as a child shows his ability of persuasion by sitting down to a roast pig dinner with a rabbi. This I laughed at but that was the last time (only 100 more minutes to go!) because most of the film is just amusing and any rare good lines are lost in a sea of middling humour. A cameo by Seagal is quite good but not as funny as it could have been if he'd made more fun of himself. Even Crystal's dialogue (usually an oasis in the sea of sentimentality) is poor.

He doesn't do a good job at all here and, although he is playing his usual character, it's difficult to care less what happens to him or why. Muresan is an average basketball player who is good as a bench player but not as a starter. I saw him play in San Antonio when he was with Washington Bullets (as was) and was surprised at how slow and uncoordinated he was on court. On the screen he has the same qualities – awkward, ungainly etc. He makes a sympathetic character so it's not all bad but it doesn't seem to come naturally for him. The two don't have much chemistry and you wonder if there was much onset banter between them once Crystal had used up all his NBA questions. The rest of the cast are Ok and there's a few well known faces in there but Seagal is probably the best bit of casting in the film and he is amusing if not funny.

Overall this is a pretty average film that is just about passable but certainly not funny or enjoyable. There are a few laughs and the rest of the film either falls into fake, cloying sentimentality or just goes for laughs by having the big and the small man beside each other. I love Crystal even in poor films but I won't be watching My Giant again unless I'm tied to a chair a la `Clockwork Orange'.