Low-brow comedies have been enormously popular for the past few years, since the release of huge smash hits as There’s Something About Mary in 1998 and American Pie in 1999 proved to Hollywood that these types of films were profitable again. Yet as with most trends in movies, the slew of imitators that try to cash in on such popular phases usually end up failing miserably, and Tomcats is no exception.
The movie is about a group of guys who make a bet to see who can remain a lady-killing bachelor, or “tomcat,” the longest. They all put a few hundred dollars into a market account, agreeing that the last man to escape the tyranny of wedlock gets the pot. Flash forward to seven years later. Due to sound investing the pot has grown to half a million dollars, and only two tomcats remain: nice guy Michael (Jerry O’Connell) and sleazeball Kyle (Jake Busey). Early in the film Michael has a mishap at a casino and ends up owing some very bad people a large amount of money. Trapped in a pay-up-or-die situation, he devises a plan to marry off Kyle to “the one that got away,” Natalie (Shannon Elizabeth).
Using such a complicated scenario for such a mindless movie was definitely a mistake on the part of the writer/director Gregory Poirier. A comedy with a story as involved as this one needs to have jokes that are as involved, perhaps even intelligent and witty, for the whole thing to pay off. Instead the movie always aims for the lowest common denominator, the tasteless joke, the raunch and sleaze that we’ve become accustomed to from big Hollywood comedies lately, and this style of comedy seems at odds with this type of semi-sophisticated plot. (Imagine The Taming of The Shrew, reverse the genders, make the shrew a womanizing sleazeball, and you have this movie. Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave if he knew his work was being infested with Viagra jokes and innuendo about hamsters.)
Any female readers I may have probably noticed the phrase “the tyranny of wedlock” I used above and threw the paper aside in horror, which can only serve to illustrate a point I’d like to make about the marketing of this movie being way off-base. Any movie about guys who treat women as sexual objects and try to avoid serious relationships is going to end up labeled as misogynistic, and the trailers of the movie, laden with scantily clad women, don’t help to endear this film with most women.
But apparently the director wanted to try to coax these women back into the theater by pandering to what they stereotypically like to see in movies. An effort is made to strengthen Natalie’s character by making her an undercover cop, and a romantic element enters into the mix when Michael starts to fall for her himself and have second thoughts about his plan. Such additions were a big mistake, and they take the edge off this comedy, leaving it with little to offer. Most women I know gave up on this movie with the first preview they saw, so trying to bring them into the theaters was a mistake. The filmmakers should have gone all out, taking a hint from the hit Comedy Central series The Man Show and wallowing in tastelessness aimed at men and men alone, like it or lump it. Instead they tried to have their cake and eat it too, and ended up doing neither.
The gutless approach that the movie takes by skating a fine line between political correctness and blatant sexism causes the characters to become caricatures, drawn flatly to fit into standard roles that will allow the romance to continue. Jake Busey’s character Kyle is essentially the “villain,” the guy we don’t want to end up with the girl. But he is painted as so obviously a scumbag that you have to wonder how he ever gets a date. Dan Fielding has nothing on Kyle. Meanwhile Michael is our “hero” of sorts, so he is portrayed as such a goody two-shoes that we come to doubt his status as a “tomcat.” The few instances when we see him trying to engage in “tomcat” behavior go horribly wrong, resulting in one instance in his being tied to a rack by a dominatrix disguised as a soft-spoken librarian.
None of these problems are the faults of the actors; both Busey and O’Connell do as much as they can within the limits of their roles. Shannon Elizabeth too has her moments portraying Natalie with such radiance and charm that you like Michael must fall for her. But other times, for the purpose of lame jokes, her character suddenly lapses into viciousness, creating such inconsistency that we don’t ever understand her character’s motivations. One scene highlights this switching back and forth in an attempt at humor by showing Natalie and her partner discussing her growing feelings for Michael during a drug bust. One moment she’s talking sweetly about how to know if Michael feels the same for her as she does for him; the next she’s gunning down a perp. This type of banter mixed with violence has been overused ever since Pulp Fiction first did it well, and the attempt here falls flat.
And poor Horatio Sanz plays Steve, one of the Tomcats who has just recently wed Tricia (Jaime Pressley). In a blatant attempt to make him the modern SNL equivalent of Chris Farley, he engages in the same kind of “fat-guy-knocking-stuff-over” humor that Farley did, often times pointlessly. Early in the film, shortly after Steve’s marriage, Michael comes over to Steve’s house to find him watering the lawn. Suddenly Steve loses control of the hose, dousing himself in water and tripping over it repeatedly. Why did this happen? Supposedly to make us laugh. Did it work? No.
And that in essence is the biggest problem with the script for this film, that at times it puts things in that have nothing to do with the plot, just to make us laugh. A Mission Impossible 2 parody manages to succeed at this because it is done with some level of intelligence, but other scenes fail miserably. A subplot about Steve suspecting his wife Tricia is secretly a lesbian simply does not work, because we don’t really care about either of the characters in the least. Late in the movie Kyle is stricken with testicular cancer suddenly; at first this brush with death might seem to be in the movie to serve as a reason for him to finally settle down with Natalie. Instead it is an excuse to throw in gags at a sperm bank and an actual chase scene in which Michael must try to find Kyle’s missing testicle… because he wants to keep it like a child keeps his tonsils.
I blame the writer/director for this movie’s failure, for its uneven script causes the horrible waste of some actually talented comedic actors. The movie never decides whether or not it’s a romance or a comedy and thus fails at doing either. You know you’ve got trouble when the funniest part of the movie is the outtakes that roll over the credits, and that is certainly the case here. If you want an uproarious and daring comedy about guys talking about sex non-stop and cracking tasteless jokes, rent Clerks. If you want a meaningful and intelligent film about a group of single guys going to bars and picking up women, rent Swingers. If you want to see Jaime Pressley naked, rent Poison Ivy: The New Seduction. In all of these cases, Tomcats fails to deliver.
Originally published, in abridged form, in the Capaha Arrow, April 5, 2001.
