AllMovie

Matt Dillon makes a disappointing return to the screen after a three-year absence with this abysmal "comedy" that is one of the year's most misogynistic and puerile films, an astonishingly bad debut for the production company of co-star Michael Douglas. To be fair, director Harald Zwart and late screenwriter Stan Seidel aren't just presenting offensive stereotypes of women here, they're doing the same to the other sex. The film's central female figure is seen only through the wish-fulfillment fantasies of the men she encounters, while they in turn utterly ignore the sometimes easily discernible truth about her character and bestow upon her whatever qualities they wish to find. By turns sexy, motherly, virginal, abused, coquettish, and helpless -- depending on who's interpreting her -- Jewel (Liv Tyler) is not a character, she's an icon. In true femme fatale fashion, she's using her power over the panting, mindless males she encounters to get what she wants, namely consumerist symbols of success, safety, and comfort. The minds that conceived and executed this lame-brained, stereotype-reinforcing exercise have some serious issues about their ideas to work out in therapy regarding men, women, and relationships; but it's not necessary for an audience to sit through their effort to grapple with their limitations on celluloid. One Night at McCool's (2001) is a major dud and a big-time letdown from talents such as Dillon and Douglas, whose scenes together, goofy as they are, are the only things worth seeing in the film.