“Welcome To Mooseport” (20th Century Fox)
Ray Romano is one of the most popular guys on network television. His show, “Everybody Loves Raymond,” is consistently in the top ten. Now Romano has moved over to feature films. Based on his screen debut in “Welcome To Mooseport,” everybody won’t be loving Ray Romano the movie actor.
This movie is just about as tedious and tiring as a movie can be. Romano plays a good guy named Handy Harrison who lives and works in the town of Mooseport. This is where former President Monroe Cole (Gene Hackman) has his summer home. Through a contrived plot maneuver both men end up running for the position of Mayor of this fair city. They also pursue the same female, the local veterinarian named Sally (Maura Tierney).
Super talented actress Marcia Gay Harden is also in the cast as Grace, Cole’s assistant. Fred Savage is another member of his staff, and Christine Baranski plays his ex-wife. Rip Torn is featured as his campaign manager. That is a lot of talent to be wasted in a trivial comedy such as this one.
The main problem with the movie is Romano. Instead of making Handy a likeable everyman, he creates a blithering idiot who is more pitied than liked. As Handy stumbles and grumbles his way through the campaign for Mayor and for Sally, you just want to pull a Cher, smack his face and yell “Snap out of it!”
Hackman is a little better, but not much. Somehow you feel he is just phoning in his performance and really doesn’t want to exert a lot of acting effort. He manages to get by on pure charm alone and that is not enough to warrant any favor from his fans. Harden does seem to be trying to create a character but the final script weighs her down.
Tierney is cute and cuddly but ends up looking unattractive in some of the key scenes. If she is the object of desire from these two men, why doesn’t she look the part! Baranski does look good and makes her “cameo” appearance one of the film’s few highlights.
The movie is rated PG-13 for profanity and nudity.
“Welcome To Mooseport” appears to want to be one of those quirky stories like you used to get on the TV series “Northern Exposure.” Hello! that was a TV series and this is a movie. There is a difference. But the makers of “Mooseport” didn’t discover that and ended up giving us recycled TV grade comedy.
I scored “Welcome To Mooseport” an unwelcome 4 out of 10.
