'Last Shot' has its funny bits

Matthew Broderick, Ray Liotta and Alec Baldwin star in the film.
By CHRISTY LEMIRE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The first thing to say about "The Last Shot": The Hollywood satire does get several big laughs from individual lines and ideas.
The next thing you should know: Screenwriter Jeff Nathanson ("Catch Me If You Can"), directing for the first time as well as writing the script, doesn't say much that's new about the land of the fake and fickle.
Based on a true story, the film follows wannabe director Steven Schats (Matthew Broderick, always comfortable playing boyish and vulnerable), a sad sack who bides his time tearing tickets at Grauman's Chinese Theater and running a kennel for celebrities' pets, the barking of which infuriates his would-be actress girlfriend (a volatile, very un-"Ally McBeal"-like Calista Flockhart).
Big break? Not really
Steven thinks he's finally getting his big break when a producer gives him the chance to make his dream picture, "Arizona," a tearjerker about a woman dying of cancer in the desert, which is based on his own sister.
Except the movie is being shot in Providence, R.I. And it's not really a movie at all.
Steven is actually a pawn in a federal mob sting. And the "producer" is an FBI agent named Joe Devine (Alec Baldwin, who's smarmily manipulative in a way that recalls his work in "Glengarry Glen Ross").
Joe has aspirations of his own: being as successful as his brother (Ray Liotta), who's head of the FBI. He could also use a psychological boost following the suicide of his beloved Border collie, who flung herself into the hot tub because Joe was out of town working too much.
The joke is just one example of the film's often surreal sense of humor. So is nearly everything Joan Cusack says as a crass, brash movie producer who explains the business to Joe.
"I'm a huge fan of law enforcement," she tells him in all earnestness. "I used to date the black guy on 'Hill Street Blues."'
Femme fatale
The actress playing Steven's sister, Emily French (Toni Collette, fabulous in a rare role as a femme fatale), wants to revive her career, which has spiraled into B-movies and rehab. So she gladly supplies a urine sample in the middle of a restaurant to show Steven and Joe that she's clean.
The FBI agent shooting surveillance video behind a glass in Steven's hotel room aspires to be a cinematographer.
Even Joe's bosses, initially skeptical about the movie-as-sting-operation idea, read the script and show up with notes. (They suggest adding a high-speed motorcycle chase to spice things up.)
And many of the visual gags work, such as the suggestion during location scouting that a storage shed could stand in for a Hopi Indian cave in the Grand Canyon.
But on the whole, "The Last Shot" is never nearly as insightful as "The Player," or as biting as "Wag the Dog." And the idea that everyone is after something -- whether it's being a star or a power broker -- gets old pretty fast, and it wasn't even that novel a concept in the first place.