FREE: Nicholus Cage/ Samuel L. Jackson Amos and Andrew DVD

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Nicolas Cage is reason enough to see E. Max Frye's smartly constructed interracial-buddy comedy. Cage takes over the movie-snatches it clean away from the other principal performers, Samuel L. Jackson and Dabney Coleman, and the rest of the large and gifted cast. (In a few scenes, a beautiful and personable white German shepherd dog engages him in a fierce tug-of-war for the audience's attention, but Cage prevails.) The picture flirts with explosive subjects like race and class, but it has an oddly cozy, companionable tone. Frye, directing very cautiously and deliberately, doesn't do justice to his own script. About halfway through, a stubborn inconsequentiality sets in, and the movie loses urgency. At that point, the ingenious farce mechanics start to feel as if they were running on sheer inertia, because the satiric premise that set the whole thing in motion isn't driving it anymore. Also with Michael Lerner, Margaret Colin, Brad Dourif, Giancarlo Esposito, and (in a hilarious bit) Bob Balaban. -Terrence Rafferty