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The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 8, 2008

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS ...

There are outrageous and endearing Cameron Diaz romantic comedies, such as "There's Something About Mary," and there are middling and forgettable ones, such as "What Happens in Vegas ... ."

Through both varieties, Diaz brings her sunny, sassy persona to the screen in ways that make her fans happy. This is a woman who can make a crack about Ashton Kutcher pouring popcorn down his pants and emerge relatively unscathed in the process. It's called rising above your material, and not everyone can pull it off.

In "What Happens in Vegas ...," Diaz gets an obliging partner in crime with Kutcher, who is a nice match for her dizzying on-screen silliness. His Jack is an underachieving New York sexpot who manages to get fired by his own father. Her character, Joy, is an uptight Wall Street type who gets dumped by her fiance because of her fussiness.

Both head to Vegas to nurse their respective wounds, bump into each other, indulge together in a wild night of carousing and wind up married the next morning

Director Tom Vaughan manages to keep things relatively buoyant while the film operates in more of an acerbic black-comedy mode. Forced by a vindictive judge (Dennis Miller) to live together for six months before they can divorce, the sniping between Jack and Joy reaches predictably outrageous heights

But the awful moment has to come. You know the incredible sinking feeling: when the music starts to shift toward the sentimental and the dialogue gets sweet and goopy.

It's one thing to put up with stained-underwear jokes and characters relieving themselves in the kitchen sink, but when the formula love story finally kicks in, any sharpness and originality promised by the film in its earlier stages gets pounded into a mushy pulp. Yes, it happened in "Vegas," and it's too bad it couldn't have stayed there.

PG-13 (sexual and crude content, profanity, drug references); 98 minutes

Donald Munro,

McClatchy Newspapers

REDBELT **

A martial-arts movie by David Mamet sounds like a jarring combination at first, as if the two just don't to go together - until you learn that Mamet himself is a purple belt in jiujitsu.

Then you realize while watching "Redbelt" that many tenets of the sport - the ideas of control, manipulation and one-upmanship - jibe perfectly with themes the playwright, director and screenwriter has explored for decades in some of his best-known works, such as the plays "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow."

And so "Redbelt" makes sense in its own weird way: a mix of sports-flick cliches and Mamet's patented rat-a-tat writing. It's "Rocky," it's "The Karate Kid" - only with more stylized, rhythmic dialogue.

Several Mamet regulars show up (Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, David Paymer and Mamet's wife, Rebecca Pidgeon), which does put us in somewhat comfortable territory. But it's Chiwetel Ejiofor ("Dirty Pretty Things"), the film's star, who commands our attention. As the unflappably moral, placid jiujitsu instructor Mike Terry, Ejiofor can be both attractive and warm, fierce and intimidating.

A series of strangely intertwined events forces Mike into the ring, a place he's never wanted to be, to fight for $50,000.

But Mike truly practices what he preaches, handling every obstacle and challenge that thrusts itself into his path with the same calm he urges his students to achieve.

Mike and his wife, Sondra, are already struggling to maintain their West Los Angeles studio at a time when the more violent Ultimate Fighting and mixed martial arts are in vogue. A shattered front window, the result of an accidental gunshot, puts them further into debt. Then a chance encounter with aging actor Chet Frank (Tim Allen) seems to turn their financial troubles around.

In no time, Mike is visiting Chet on the set and talking about receiving a producing credit, and Sondra, a fabric designer, is working with Chet's wife, Zena (Pidgeon), on a clothing line.

Could all this happen so quickly? And could it all disappear just as fast? Probably not. But something has to get Mike into the ring for The Big Showdown. Even though the championship match doesn't play out exactly the way you've seen it before, it still adheres to the same hackneyed conventions. And the final moment, which was probably intended to be poignant, instead feels laughable.

R (strong profanity); 99 minutes

Christy Lemire,

The Associated Press

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