Best Laid Plans

This is the kind of movie that seems as if it were cooked up by a couple of college buddies over a pitcher of beer (''Wouldn't it be cool if we, like, started at the end?''). As such, Nick (Nivola) is a luckless small-town guy who gets into improbably dire straits and, with his girlfriend (Witherspoon) in tow, goes to even more improbable lengths to get out, using her as a sexual decoy in order to steal a historic document to sell to pay off a drug dealer. Told in layers of flashback, the story takes a few twists too many, while the characters do little to make the ride worthwhile.

Reel Goodies
(0:37) The Bad Ass Dude (Rocky Carroll) menaces Nick, all the while applying the economic theories of Adam ''The Invisible Hand'' Smith to his own stock-in-trade, drug dealing.

The Last Detail
Witherspoon's next big-screen role is as the fiancee of Christian Bale's yuppie serial killer in American Psycho.

C+

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