Movies I Like: Big Trouble

This post is for Film For The Soul's Counting Down The 00's.

Back in the day I was a big fan of humorist Dave Berry. He cracked my shit up. I read all of his books, read his articles every week, the whole nine yards. I learned in 2000 he was writing his first fictional book and I was all over that. It was called Big Trouble and I loved it.

Soon, I heard it was gonna be a movie and I was happy. This took us to the year 2001. They finished filming it and it was suppose to be released on September 21st, 2001.

But a thing happened just ten days prior that made people a tad bit uncomfortable. See, the story involved an airplane and airport security and we can't have movies about airplanes and airport security ten days after 9/11. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!

So it got pushed to an undetermined date which I thought was around October or November 2001, but according to imdb, it was 2002 so who am I to argue? Sadly, I was severely unemployed at this time and didn't have the money to see it in theaters. It lasted maybe 2 weeks in theaters before being quietly pulled out of theaters.

I eventually saw it and thought it was awesome. The cast is a weird hodge podge. You got Tim Allen, Johnny Knoxville, Tom Sizemore, Zooey Dashhound, Renee Russo, Putty from Seinfeld, Jeanne Garlafalo, Andy Richter, Jason Lee, Stanley Tucci, Dennis Farina, AND Heavy D. And a goat.

The story is a bit hard to talk about cause it involved several small plots that eventually ties into one big story. Tim Allen is Eliot a newspaper writer who hates his boss and has a son who plays this weird watergun game that involved Zooey, Renee Russo, and Stanley Tucci. Jason Lee is a homeless guy who moves to Florida and falls in love with Zooey, Renee, and Stanley's maid. Johnny Knoxville and Tom Sizemore are scummy wanna-be robbers who rob two Russian bar owners and ends up stealing a nuke, which they think is a million dollars. Putty and Jeanne are cops. Dennis Farina and another guy are hitmen. Heavy D is an FBI agent. A goat just runs around a highway.

Phew.

It sounds really involved but the story bounces around gracefully and is really entertaining. The best part is possibly Stanley Tucci's character getting spit in the face by a weird exotic toad and he starts tripping balls.

The airplane scenes happen at the end of the movie. Johnny and Tom have taken Renne Russo hostage and want a plane to Bermuda. They end up hijacking a plane, carrying this nuke, which slips past airport security a whole bunch of times. It's up to Eliot to jump on board and save the day with a fire extiguisher.

If you haven't, read the book first cause there's more that was left out, of course, and the way the book flows is just amazing. Dave Berry put together a great story and I wish he stuck with writing fiction. He only wrote one more fictional book, "Tricky Business", which I was hoping for a movie as well since that story is crazy as hell. But I guess he'll leave the fiction writing to his friends Stephen King, Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), and Carl Hiaasen (Striptease).

-Jason