Serving Sara | Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley | Not as bad as you'e heard, but not as good as...

Serving Sara | Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley | Could have been so much better!

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Serving Sara

	Serving Sara Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley Paramount, 2003 average customer review:based on 50 reviews view larger image
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Matthew Perry is a gifted comic actor whose style works nicely on TV but somehow hasn't translated into movie success. To change the formula a bit, Serving Sara puts Perry in a slightly scruffier mode, and pairs him with an actress whose sexiness and comic aplomb should be a good counterpart to his wonderfully shticky style: Elizabeth Hurley. And it still doesn't work. This one is set in the exciting world of process-serving, where Perry teams up with jilted wife Hurley to sting her rich husband (reliable goof Bruce Campbell). This screwball plot might have worked if the two stars evinced any chemistry together, and if director Reginald Hudlin knew how to set up a scene. Bright spot: Cedric the Entertainer, as Perry's boss, gets laughs just from doing the tiniest bits of business while seated behind his desk. No small thing in a movie that otherwise labors. --Robert Horton

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Not as bad as you'e heard, but not as good as you'd hope.

This is a movie that potentially could be really entertaining, but just doesn't work. It's not awful, it is cute, there are a few genuinely funny moments and you won't waste your time watching it, but that's about it. There are a number of reasons for this.

The first is the writing. Besides the skimpy plot, there are some really implausible things going on here, the actors aren't presented with that much to work with, and sometimes it's so jarring that you simply fall out of the suspension of disbelief that you have to have to enjoy any film. A few examples: Matthew Perry wants to buy and run a winery in the Napa Valley. He pursues the opportunity to get a million dollars to accomplish this. A million dollars isn't even remotely enough money to start, let alone run one up there, and he's too dumb to know this. Remember, he couldn't have possibly anticipated how he would get more money at the end. He has no plan to actually get to his winery. Another example is having Elizabeth Hurley prance around in a T-shirt labled "Trailer Trash". There's no purpose to that, I guess it's supposed to be "funny".

Probably the biggest of many plot stupidities is when, because of an improbable lucky break, Perry's character has the opportunity to undo the damage he caused and easily salvage the whole thing if he reacts quickly. What's the first thing he does? Go out and do it before anything can go wrong? No, he phones the "other side" and brags about their mistake and what he's going to do! This is insane!

The direction is seviceable, but in many cases it looks like the actors were on their own, lacking a unified vision of what the film was suposed to be.

As far as the cast goes, Matthew Perry is a drag on the picture. That Elizabeth Hurley falls for him (Wow! what an unexpected development!) is totally unbelievable and illogical. Grateful, yes, but love? Part of this can be blamed on the awful writing. It doesn't help that his character is an unlikable idiot, but part of it is just him. We've seen this problem in other pictures. He has little chemistry with anyone else in the picture. He was good in the small enclosed environment of Friends, but doesn't seem to be able to be that memorable at anything else (ala Kelsey Grammer sans Fraiser). His timing is simply not that good. His chemistry with Elizabeth Hurley is zero.

Elizabeth Hurley: OK, she's still gorgeous. She still shows that deft sense of comedy timing that has appeared in other films. She suffers from lack of direction and from her costar's flatness. She essentially carries the relationship, even though Perry's character is more frantic. Sadly, she is essentially wasted in this picture. She gives as good a performance as can be expected given what she has to work with.

Bruce Campbell. Always a hoot, I wish he got more work. He plays the self-centered rich husband to perfection. There is a problem, though, here with casting. The setup is that he's dumping Elizabeth Hurley for a trophy wife. When you see the actress that is playing his "trophy-elect", you have a major disconnect. A guy with this ego, has a wife who looks like Elizabeth Hurley, who is clearly devoted to him, is going to dump her for the mistress as played here? Nothing against said actress. An egotist like Campbell's character might have an affair with her just because he's who he is, but he already has the "trophy". It doesn't play.

Cedric the Entertainer. Simply put, he steals the move. You smile whenever he's on. His character has got a personality in this movie, something the other principals lack due to writing and possibly direction. He probably just played the character the way he wanted and they just filmed. Heck! The movie would have been more believable (and fun) if he and Perry had swirched roles (Hurley could also have played off him much better).

To sum up, this is a diverting piece of fluff. It's not as awful as some reviewers and critics have said, but it is essentially a pleasant time-filler.

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Could have been so much better!

Serving Sara was quite a disappointment, considering the makeup of the cast: Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley, among others!
The two of them are gorgeous (as ALWAYS), but the acting is not great, the humor is very poor, and the plot is below average.
Though the potential for a good movie was definitely there it fails to take off. A shame really...
In a nutshell, it's just an ok movie, and that's about it; it lacks that extra something to put it over the top. No masterpiece here.

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