NOTHING TO LOSE (29)

Directed by: Steve Oedekerk

Starring: Tim Robbins, Martin Lawrence, Giancarlo Esposito

The Pitch: A depressed yuppie bonds with the incompetent crook who tries to carjack him.

Theo Sez: Assorted comic riffs, staggeringly unmemorable for the most part - edging into a slightly over-studied zaniness at best (as e.g. in the convenience-store hold-up, with the elderly clerk being asked to decide which of the two robbers is the scarier), retreating into dire slapstick at worst. It's more or less held together by a thick gloss of sentimentality - at its thickest and glossiest when we pause to admire the antics of two saucer-eyed little kids - and by a rather strange quit-your-crying message : both our heroes think they're worse off than they really are - Robbins mistrusts his wife, Lawrence mistrusts Society, thinking he can't get a job because he's black - and both are shown to be wrong. What it seems to be saying is that we can all get along if we just think positive, stop complaining, and have faith in one another ; no wonder it covers it up with frying-pan-across-the- noggin jokes.