Big Trouble

Big Trouble (2002) is a film based on the novel Big Trouble by Dave Barry. It was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld and featured a large cast including Tim Allen, Rene Russo and Dennis Farina. Like much of Barry's fiction, it follows a diverse group of people through a series of extremely strange situations against the backdrop of southern Florida.

Tagline: They have forty-five minutes to save the world. They need forty-six.

Contents

1 Characters 2 Plot 3 Controversy 4 External links

Characters

Eliot Arnold (Tim Allen) has had some bad luck lately. He lost his job as a newspaper columnist after losing his temper with his editor. His wife cheated on him, leading to their divorce. The advertising agency he opened has only attracted a few lowlife clients. His teenage son Matt (Ben Foster ) thinks he's a complete loser. He drives a Geo.

Anna Herk (Rene Russo) has had better days herself. She has a close relationship with her daughter Jenny (Zooey Deschanel), but her husband Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci) is insufferable and quite possibly insane. She'd leave him if it wouldn't mean dooming Jenny and herself to a life of poverty.

Arthur's a bit on edge. He works for a company that's scored several lucrative state contracts, and he's made good money from it — but not exactly honestly. He had the poor judgment to steal from his employers, who happen to have some very powerful connections. They don't want the money back... they want Herk dead.

Henry (Dennis Farina) and Leonard (Jack Kehler ) are not happy. They hate Miami. They have one simple job to do before they can go back to New York: kill Arthur Herk. Unhappy hitmen are bad news, and these two aren't getting any happier.

Puggy (Jason Lee) is an easygoing kind of guy. He doesn't worry about much, and things always seem to work out okay. He drifts into town and takes up residence in a treehouse, depending on odd jobs and the kindness of strangers to supply him with Fritos.

Nina (Sofía Vergara) misses her homeland. She doesn't want to be a maid, especially not for a toe-sucking freak like Arthur Herk. When she finds a mysterious stranger living in a treehouse in the Herks' back yard, she falls in love with the kind, soft-spoken man.

As for Snake (Tom Sizemore) and Eddie (Johnny Knoxville)... well, they're just criminally stupid. Or, to be more accurate, they're stupid criminals. They're always on the lookout for a way to steal a quick buck.

Two FBI agents (Omar Epps and Heavy D) are making their way through Miami's darker corners on an important case. An international arms dealer is known to have smuggled a nuclear device into town recently, and it must be recovered at any cost.

Miami PD Officer Monica Romero (Janeane Garofalo) is a good cop, but she's saddled with a narcissistic idiot for a partner. Namely, Officer Walter Kramitz (Patrick Warburton), who's always hitting on her. In fact, he's always hitting on every female he sees.

Plot

A simple high-school game of "Killer" brings all of these characters into direct contact with each other. Matt Arnold has to "shoot" classmate Jenny Herk with a squirt gun to advance in his game, and decides to sneak up on her at home one night. Meanwhile, hitmen Henry and Leonard are also watching the house, biding their time until they can whack Arthur. When the fake assassination attempt crosses paths with the real one, the police are called out to the resulting disturbance and Eliot has to explain his son's actions. Matt and Jenny feel an instant attraction to each other, as do Eliot and Anna. But if this was just a prank gone wrong, why is there a bullet lodged in the TV?

Arthur Herk realizes that he was the bullet's intended victim, and loses the little bit of mental stability he had. He races to a seedy bar that serves as a front for Russian arms dealers, hoping to get something with which to defend himself. His employers, he tells the dealers, have sent him to retrieve the big guns. They give him the biggest gun imaginable: a nuclear bomb in a suitcase. Unfortunately, lowlifes Snake and Eddie pick this moment to rob the "bar". Not knowing what's in the suitcase ("What is that, a garbage disposal?"), but convinced that it's very valuable, they steal it.

The FBI agents pursue the crooks. The hitmen pursue Arthur. The Herk women and the Eliot men pursue each other. The cops try to figure out what in the world is going on. And Arthur gets squirted in the face by a hallucinogenic toad.

The dimwitted criminals end up on a plane headed for Cuba with the bomb still in tow. Eliot manages to sneak onto the same flight in one last effort to save the day, stop the bad guys and show his son that he isn't such a loser after all.

Controversy

Big Trouble was originally scheduled for nationwide release in December 2001. Unfortunately, the events of September 11 of that year cast an unshakable pall over the movie's comedic smuggling of a nuclear device onto an airplane. (A gun also makes its way onto the plane, but this was easily overshadowed by the specter of the WMD.) Consequently, the film was pushed back until April 2002, and the promotion campaign was toned down almost to the point of abandonment. Big Trouble came quietly to American theaters and left quickly afterwards, receiving some positive reviews but generally ignored by audiences.

External links