Late Last Night is an offbeat comedy scripted and directed by Steven Brill, who also wrote and directed Little Nicky, then took the helm with another man's script for Mr. Deeds.

Don't be scared off by that resumé. Although it was an earlier Brill work, and was a non-theatrical release, Late Last Night probably comes closer to being a good movie than either of those two high budget Adam Sandler vehicles. In fact, Late Last Night has some very positive elements, although they just didn't quite manage to coalesce into a solid whole.

Emilio Estevez plays a man whose wife has left him. He genuinely loves her, and didn't see the split coming, so his reaction is a combination of hating her and hating himself. On the day she loads her u-haul and moves out, Estevez heads out on an extended bender. He begins by drowning his sorrows in an alkie bar, but that turns out to be the wrong place to turn for a sympathetic ear, since the jaded regulars and the bartender simply bait him in order to get him to bare his soul - all so they can make fun of him. He realizes that he has to have a sympathetic ear, but dozens of phone calls prove unproductive until he reaches a mysterious ex-friend played by Steven Weber.

Weber leads Estevez into a crazed evening on the wild side, buying crack from strangers, picking up coke whores, attending orgies, stealing cars, breaking into hotel suites, playing midnight golf by the headlights of a cadillac - a veritable frat boy's wet dream of an evening. Weber says and does everything that Estevez has only read about during his conservative marriage. This works on one level, at least temporarily, until we realize that Weber's behavior crosses over into the surreal and we realize that he is not a real person at all, but just some kind of doppelganger who has been summoned from the Estevez subconscious to do and say the things that are impossible for Estevez's timid conscious personality.

The time when we realize that Weber is an alter ego is about the time when the movie stops working, because after a certain point we just don't know how to assess Weber's behavior. (At one point Weber answers a question by breaking into a Broadway song and dance number, using the local coke whores as a back-up chorus. He's pretty damned good, by the way!) Are we to assume that  Estevez actually did say the words spoken by the Weber character? Or are we to think that Weber only represents what Estevez would like to have said, and that Estevez actually remains timid in these situations? Is he even in these situations, or is it some kind of dream? Does Estevez himself know that Weber is imaginary? He seems not to - but he also seems so drunk and stoned that our interpretation of events is polluted by his own altered consciousness. In short, we simply can't tell what is happening and what is not, and this makes the author's thought process hard to follow.

The end of the film involves some philosophical and sentimental reconciliation between the two halves of the Estevez personality, a change in tone which is marked by more than a hint of poetry, the kind of ruminations that might actually happen at the end of a frenetic evening, when the bulk of the drugs have worn off and quiet sadness has replaced the frenzy.

Anyway, the film is not so bad at all. If it doesn't quite work, it is not because it shot too low, but because it shot for the stars now and then, and didn't quite have enough thrust for lift-off. I think it could have been quite an enjoyable movie if it had not been so ambitious, had been more straightforward, has eschewed the gimmicks of uncertain reality and occasional surrealism. I think I would have liked it much better if the film had used an omniscient POV instead of the Estevez POV, so that I could have understood what was actually happening in the real world, which could then in turn have allowed me to understand when and why Estevez resorted to alternate internal realities.

• Kelly Monaco (1, 2, 3)

• some coke ho (1, 2)

• 141 ways to say "drunk"
• Nicole Richie is forced to flash her breasts in the Reno airport.
• The PUSSY SNORKEL: "The Pussy Snorkel allows a man to continue breathing while performing oral sex on a woman in a spa, bathtub or even a bowl of green Jell-O." WARNING: it has not been tested on other colors of Jell-o.
• The trailer for Stage Beauty (October 29th): "Actor Edward 'Ned' Kynaston (Billy Crudup) may well be the most desired man in all of London. The Restoration is in full swing, and enthusiastic audiences of aristocrats and commoners pack the theatres that were shuttered during the Puritans' joyless rule. With only men permitted to tread the boards, the greatest ardor is reserved for the actor who is the complete 'female stage beauty' - and indisputably, Ned Kynaston is that actor. Lusted after by women and men alike, Ned commands all the perks of a star; at the same time, he is a dedicated actor who runs lines with his stage dresser Maria (Claire Danes), who quietly adores him. Every night, Ned's death scene as Desdemona in 'Othello' stops the show. But the winds of change are blowing - and they sound like the rustling of women's skirts. Ironically, it is Maria who ushers in a new era with her pseudonymous portrayal of Desdemona in an after-hours pub production of 'Othello.' After years of men-as-women, Maria is a sensation, a novelty whose time has come. King Charles II (Rupert Everett), prodded by his saucy, stage-struck mistress Nell Gwynn (Zoe Tapper), not only overturns the ban on actresses but also prohibits men from playing female roles. Overnight, Ned's career is ruined as a host of fledgling actresses take on the parts that he once owned body and soul. Ned is headed for a has-been's twilight in tawdry attractions - that is, until Maria takes it upon herself to make an actor of him again. Finally, the masks fall away to reveal Ned and Maria's true feelings, but not before Ned undergoes a profound inner journey to discover his complete identity."
• The drinking habits of the cruel, powerful, and often times very loaded. "Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant ... "
• Finally!! A new game for your Commodore 64 or leftover 286 processor. If you aren't familiar with the site, it is hard to explain the offbeat humor and pop culture satire of HomestarrRunner.com. To get the general idea, try this parody of Japanese cartoons, as explained by their resident masked Mexican wrestler, Strongbad, who answers their e-mail. (I told you it was hard to explain.)
• EGM's 10 Naughtiest Video Games of All Time
• For those of you who just can't get enough reality: USA Today's guide to summer reality TV. (It also fills you in on anything you missed.)
• Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?
• Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie 'Fahrenheit 9/11' during a performance at the Aladdin.
• Stop alien abductions and mind control, with the help of stopabductions.com: "THIS WEBSITE TELLS YOU HOW TO MAKE A THOUGHT SCREEN HELMET, THE MATERIALS AND TOOLS YOU NEED TO MAKE ONE, AND WHERE YOU CAN OBTAIN THE MATERIALS"
  • Now bear with me for a minute, but if I were an alien seeking to control your mind, I would create a web site which would tell you FALSELY how to ward off my mind control rays, so you would think you were safe. Then, voila, "all your thought are belong to us".
  • Just sayin'.
• Who are Edmund Reade and Elizabeth Cooke? They were a married couple who lived in Shakespearian England. Like Shakespeare's Banquo, although they were not destined to be kings, the Reades would sire kings, after a fashion. Their daughter Margaret is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of George W Bush, and their daughter Elizabeth is the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother of John Kerry! Bush and Kerry are something like ninth cousins twice removed.
• Playboy's 50 Imagemakers - memorable photos from the history of Playboy Magazine. Naked women, comedians, athletes, musicians, playmates, lifestyle, a little bit of everything. Quite a bit of nudity.
• Commies for Kerry? In the Vietnamese Communist War Remnants Museum, a photograph of John Kerry hangs in a room dedicated to anti-Vietnam-war activists.
• An online preview of SCIFI.COM's "Scare Tactics"
• Democrats aren't amused by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's use of the mocking term "girlie men" to describe some lawmakers. The spineless wimps in question claim he is misogynist, homophobic, and what-have-you. Fuckin' pussies.
• Britney Spears is fighting mad over a New York Post report that the pop princess was boozing in broad daylight. Turns out she was drinking ginseng in the picture.
• Timed with the release of The Bourne Supremacy, Latino Review interviews Matt Damon.
• You've heard of Mr October (Reggie Jackson)? Well sir, Will Smith is Mr. July. The success of I, Robot marks the fourth time that Smith has toplined a July film which opened with a weekend of $50 million or more.
  • I saw "I, Robot" over the weekend, and it was a much better film than I had expected. The previews had led me to expect far too many CGI battle scenes with improbable action. There was some of that, and the final fight scene was irritating in that regard, but the movie had a lot more as well - a detective plot, some mysteries to reveal, some humor, and some philosophical depth. Most important, the film is more thoughtful and far more soulful than I had been led to expect. It does have to acknowledge a certain debt to Blade Runner, because it treats a lot of the same themes and uses some similar characters and situations, but it is not really derivative of the earlier film at all. It exists in a completely different world. Compared to Blade Runner, it is less poetry, more popcorn.
• Screen beauty Natalie Portman now says she will consider stripping nude on film if she's offered the right situation. (She once vowed never to do any screen nudity.)
• World Net Daily claims: GOP convention protests funded by Kerry's wife. Well, not exactly. Don't muster up any mental pictures of Mrs Kerry carrying a briefcase full of money to meet with some anarchists in the dead of night.
  • You see, Kerry's wife oversees the Howard Heinz Endowment. Through that endowment, she directed money in the past to a group called the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation in turn gave some money to a group called The International Action Center, which is headed up by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Clark's group, in turn, sponsored a group called United for Peace and Justice and some smaller groups (including The Ruckus Society, which is supposed to be an anarchist group) which are allegedly organizing some protests at the GOP convention.
  • Oh, yeah, did I mention that Mrs Kerry cut off that funding to the Tides Foundation in 2001?
  • So the correct headline would read. "Some unknown portion of the money given by Mrs Kerry in 1995-2001 to one group was given to another group, and that second group gave an unknown portion of that unknown portion to additional groups, and three years after Mrs Kerry's last donation, those last groups are involved in protests against the GOP convention in 2004". That's somewhat less dramatic than the original headline.
• Hey, this is from Norway and it is almost a news story.Right-wing politicians want to ban Islam in Norway. This will affect both Kareem and his wife.
• Elephants and Rhinos really get along well. I mean REALLY well.
• CNN video- Late night comics comment on the touchy-feely Edwards/Kerry relationship.
• CNN Video reports on the weekend at the box office.
• Comics on Duty. Comedians serving in Iraq.
• Lose that boner. It's a man in Halle Berry's catsuit.
• Nude man caught covered in nacho cheese.
• Meat hook dangling craze mystifies police.
• MovieJuice! takes a humorous look at "I, Robot", aka ArtyD2
• 46 year old Sharon Stone has stunned Hollywood by showing off her toned bod in a photo shoot for Rolling Stone magazine.
• The early embarrassments of star careers. As Cameron Diaz has discovered, old roles come back to haunt you in Hollywood
• The Adriana Lima Picture Pages
• Oh, you wacky terrorist, you. Nutbags claim: If you ever use royalty-free movies or songs, you are supporting al-Qaida! "One counterfeiting case has been reported in the media, where there are alleged connections to al-Qaida". Or, as I like to call it, al-Kazaa. Now here is the case: since 9/11 there have been, what, a billion instances of intellectual property theft, counting mp3s and movies and Asian brand knock-offs? Maybe more than a billion. Of those, exactly one has a tenuous connection to al-Qaida, and that was an ALLEGED connection. There it is. The evidence is right in front of your face, and you choose to ignore it.
• The HBO miniseries Angels in America won the top prize, program of the year, from the nation's TV critics in weekend ceremonies.

Here are the latest movie reviews available at scoopy.com.

• The yellow asterisks indicate that I wrote the review, and am deluded into thinking it includes humor.
• If there is a white asterisk, it means that there isn't any significant humor, but I inexplicably determined there might be something else of interest.
• A blue asterisk indicates the review is written by Tuna (or Junior or Brainscan, or somebody else besides me)
• If there is no asterisk, I wrote it, but am too ashamed to admit it.