The grass here in Texas is as brown and dry as straw. We’re setting historical heat records in the Lone Star State and we’re in the throes of a dangerous drought with no end in sight. And yet, the golf courses here are still green. Nice to know we still have our priorities straight.
Still golf, the silly, rather pointless game that it is, has a way of inducing obsession in susceptible, otherwise sane people. How else to explain Artie Clay putting a gun in his mouth while sitting in his golf cart, ending it all merely over an about-to-be-disclosed payola scheme involving free passes to a local Orlando country club?
At least, I think that’s the gist of Johnny Durango’s mind numbing quadruple bogey “Lawyers and Other W****s.” I wouldn’t swear to it because I was drooling from a self-induced lobotomy after about the first thirty minutes or so.
While there are more dangling subplots here than participles in a freshman English paper, most seem to swirl around recovering the sizable chunk of cash Artie left behind for Bill Preston (Reggie Johnson), a hunky lawyer who claims he actually has a conscience. Preston must shake the dogged pursuit of an incompetent band of henchfolk hired by Artie’s onetime crony and current city commisioner Charles “Crash” Corrigan (Gene Nash). This relatively straightforward plotline at least makes sense, unlike most of the rest of this mess. Also scrambled in here like peppers in a Mexican omelet are fragmented threads involving the city’s lesbian mayor and her secret fling with a sexy Chinese national, Preston’s unrequited lust for one of the mayor’s assistants, and the illicit sex and drug escapades of Crash’s spoiled rich bitch daughter.
Seems a little thin to fill up 126 minutes, doesn’t it? 126 minutes! Then again, if all a filmmaker does is turn the camera on and let the “actors” make things up as they go along, it’s pretty easy to burn up some serious running time.
“Lawyers and Other W****s” is a tedious, useless mess. This sucker was still adding new characters at the ninety minute mark…yet the viewer still doesn’t really have a clue as to who the characters he’s already been watching are. Probably doesn’t really care, either.
Video makers like Durango can brag as much as they want, like he does on his video box, about how their film was made “…right under the noses” of their city’s ruling elite. The fact is, boring nonsensical crap is still boring nonsensical crap no matter how it was made. “Lawyers and Other W****s” is exactly that and more.
Wow, holy crap! I was IN this movie (sort of), I did the voiceover narration. Johnny still owes me the $100 bucks he promised!
On the plus side of the ledger, I still have my two copies (on VHS) of the movie, complete with the 3D glasses for the cover art!