Crap Shoot (2008)

Before he wrote and directed his first feature film, Gun Shy, Eric Blakeney worked on TV series including Wiseguy, Moonlighting, and Max Headroom. The experience apparently scarred him. This misshapen clunker appears to be spliced together from innumerable TV shows, including undercover-cop capers, men-in-psychotherapy sitcoms, romances predicated on tight males loosened by whimsical females, and operatic Mob dramas. And spliced is the key word: A half hour in and still, the plot, tone, and setting are incomprehensible.

This much I know: Liam Neeson wears the indignity of this gig on his face as Charlie, an undercover agent so traumatized by a failed sting operation that his guts are in a knot. For treatment, he joins a men's therapy group stocked with Annoyingly Amusing Characters. He also goes for an enema, where he meets Judy, a freewheeling nurse (Sandra Bullock, who also produced, making one wonder which projects she rejected). Judy lights up Charlie's life with her playful attitude when not irrigating his colon. (The two fool around in a rooftop-garden pile of manure.)

For variety, there are also jokes about urination, and one wacky scene involving genital mutilation, but why give away secrets? Versatile Oliver Platt wastes his time as an unhappy Italian mobster; Mary McCormack slums as his vulgar wife; The West Wing's Richard Schiff dutifully plays a dorky fellow patient; and Mitch Pileggi assumes a shiftier version of his X-Files fed. He, above all, should know that the truth isn't anywhere in here.

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