What's the Worst That Could Happen?

A curious film, this, neither the disaster its title indicates nor the cheap laugh-fest that the presence of Martin Lawrence would imply. Based on a novel by Donald E. Westlake, the film, from director Sam Weisman (George of the Jungle), actually boasts a decent script with character development, a sense of pace and some well-drawn supporting roles. Unfortunately, it's still not a particularly engrossing film, perhaps because neither of the leads, professional burglar Kevin (Lawrence) or corrupt archcapitalist Max (Danny DeVito) is worthy of our sympathy. And for all the time the film takes to execute its premise, the story ultimately boils down to a simple sitcom standby: Men rise to an incredibly stupid challenge for the sake of machismo (expending large amounts of energy to obtain a "lucky" ring), only to be bailed out by their girlfriends, who are a whole lot smarter than they are. At least there's a somewhat surprising finale. William Fichtner puts in an uncharacteristic and funny turn as a fey dandy of a detective who adores his tiny dogs, and the soundtrack has a bit more imagination than most, featuring hip-hop covers of old standbys like "High Hopes" and "Whatever Lola Wants" (it's old-white-guy-meets-hip-black-guy, get it?), but Lawrence seems strangely devoid of energy and appears to be wearing twice as much makeup as everyone else. The film is just different enough that it'll probably find an audience eventually. Just not here, and not today.