With Friends like These

Playing a venal producer in a sour cameo, Bill Murray looks around a Hollywood party full of B-list character actors and pronounces it a graveyard of familiar faces no one knows the names of. It's one of the better moments in Philip Messina's inane and earnest comedy With Friends like These, a film that does little to revive or honor the dead. Adam Arkin, David Straithairn, Jon Tenny, and Robert Costanzo play a cadre of bit players who take relief from their struggle to be typecast in bad TV shows and commercials by playing poker together and indulging in ritualistic riffs from Robert De Niro movies. When word gets out that Martin Scorsese (who makes a brief but embarrassed appearance) is casting an Al Capone movie and is looking for an unknown to star, the boys' fragile kinship unravels in mild treachery. Silly when it tries to be serious, strained when it tries to be silly, Friends exceeds its abuse of its male cast with that of its women -- Amy Madigan, Laura San Giacomo, Elle Macpherson, and Lauren Tom play characters ranging from hapless housewife to bulimic incompetent. Screens at the Copley Place at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. Star Robert Costanzo and director Philip Messina will introduce tonight's 7:15 p.m. showing.

-- Peter Keough

| Digging to China | Monument Ave. | Rounders | With Friends like These |

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