The Grand.

"Great movies about gambling - Robert Altman's California Split, say, or Jacques Demy's Bay of Angels - concern almost everything but the rules of the game or even the outcome of the wager," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. "What matters are faces, surroundings, sharp talk, and the behavior of people in the grip of fixation—people undaunted by losing, yet unappeased by winning. The Grand, a largely improvised comedy set at a Las Vegas poker championship, isn't as good or tough-minded as those movies. But it earns a seat at the table anyway, mostly because it's funny - sometimes very funny."

"The actors certainly look as if they're having a good time, and if you're in the right mood, you might too," suggests Manohla Dargis in the New York Times.

Updated through 3/25.

Director Zak Penn, "a recognized screenwriter in Hollywood responsible for penning such scripts as PCU, X2 and Last Action Hero, as well as the forthcoming The Incredible Hulk, actually wrote little of his 2004 improvisational 'hoax' documentary, Incident at Loch Ness, starring Werner Herzog, and he follows a similar, improvisation-heavy pattern here," notes Meghan Keane in the New York Sun.

"Penn's poker comedy is a light-hearted tease on the math geeks, old-school sharks, Internet donkeys, and random yahoos that turn up on ESPN poker broadcasts," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "But typical of bad improv, the inmates take over the asylum, leaving a movie that's little more than a loose, wildly uneven assemblage of individual comedic shtick."

Interviews with Penn: Paul Cullum (Los Angeles Times), Logan Hill (New York) and Andy Klein (LA CityBeat).

Update, 3/25: Michelle Orange talks with Penn for the IFC.

Posted by dwhudson at March 24, 2008 1:02 PM