Shuffle Up and Improvise

In the tradition of This is Spinal Tap, Best of Show, A Mighty Wind, etc. comes the improvised mockumentary The Grand directed and co-written by Zak Penn, who pays off some of the great debt he owes movies for Elektra and X-Men: The Last Stand.

The film centers on a motley bunch of competitors in a 10 million dollar poker tournament. And, um...well, come to think of it, that's pretty much it. Penn's reportedly a big poker player, and recruited some of the best of Hollywood's players to be in the film--and Phil Gordon, poker commentator to-boot (gets some of the best lines). The players include: David Cross, Judy Greer, Woody Harrelson, Gabe Kaplan, Richard Kind, Cheryl Hines, Michael McKean, Chris Parnell, Ray Romano, and Dennis Farina (always fun to see him to comedy). Those are more than enough to fill 104 minutes--but the film manages to pack in even more.

I really want to go on about this, but really that's all there is to say. Strange characters, well-to-brilliantly played; poker; an overall plot that holds up better than Christopher Guest's flicks; and say 100 minutes of laughs (pretty sure there've gotta be 4 minutes of dead time...maybe up to 8).