William Boyd adapts his own novel, Stars and Bars. Boyd has form in the fish out of water comedy as he made a television adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop in the mid 1980s.This is probably the last film by Daniel Day-Lewis before he broke out as an Actor with a capital A. He plays an art dealer Henderson who has newly arrived in New York. Henderson is a repressed stiff upper lipped Englishman who wants to break out and let loose in New York. Maybe just like the real DDL who was stuck playing either priggish English toffs (more akin to his upbringing) or yobs at this point in his career.At work he has bizarre relationship with a work colleague (Steven Wright) and hits it off with a kooky artist (Joan Cusack.)Henderson is sent down by his boss to the Gothic south to purchase a loss Renoir that the eccentric Harry Dean Stanton purchased in France at the end of the war. While he is there he encounters various family oddballs including Stanton's son who hates him and find himself in the middle of a rival bidding war for the painting.The film is meant to be a bizarre comedy but it is uneven and strained. The characters are painted in broad brush strokes, some with limited screen time as the film is choppily edited. It has a loose structure which makes little sense again highlighting issues in the editing.Whatever William Boyd's novel was, it did not hit the screen. DDL looks uncomfortable with the slapstick but at the end his Henderson might have found himself in amongst all the shenanigans.

It may be a far cry from classic screwball comedy, but even during its many forgettable moments this fish-out-of-water farce isn't a total write-off. Certainly there's nothing in it to justify the cold-blooded lack of confidence that killed it at the Box Office: the throwaway release it received is usually reserved for lame dogs someone wants put out of misery, and in this case it worked.At least the film never pretends to be anything more than what it is: a self-consciously wacky social comedy with an outsider's exaggerated, broad-as-a-barn-door view of American manners, starring Daniel Day Lewis as a dapper English art appraiser who runs into an oddball collection of cartoon Confederate rebels while investigating a lost Renoir in backwoods Georgia. All the film needs is a laugh-track to become a respectable TV sitcom (a degenerate Beverly Hillbillies?), but director Pat O'Connor doesn't show much aptitude for low comedy, and the laughs collapse into a feeble slapstick conclusion, leaving the door wide open for a sequel which will never be made.

Like a lot people unfortunate enough to see this film, I chose to watch it because Daniel Day Lewis was in it. I mean, I've seen this guy play Hamlet on stage; I know what he's capable of so what on earth possessed him to make such a breathtakingly terrible film? Come to think of it, what possessed Harry Dean Stanton, Joan Cusack and Laurie Metcalf? They're all good actors and I just can't understand why they had anything to do with such unadulterated tripe.Thankfully I'd actually taped the film to watch later so I was able to stop and start and eventually just scan through it to see what the final outcome was. Needless to say, the conclusion to this truly lame movie was as bad as the rest of it.If you're curious about "Stars and Bars" and are thinking that maybe you'll take a peek if you come across it just to see how bad it really is; do yourself a favour and don't bother. It's not even worth seeing for that reason.As for Day Lewis, Dean Stanton, Cusack and Metcalf: hang your heads in shame people; you're all smart enough to know better.

I was switching around channels one day when I happened to catch the beginning fencing scene of the movie on Showtime. I thought it would be good, as Daniel Day Lewis was in it, and when the beginning credits mentioned other members of the cast, it seemed like a diamond in a rough. Well, I was right about the "rough" part, but not about a diamond. Nothing about this movie resembled a gemstone, and it just goes to show that things aren't always what they seem.The movie is a fish-out-of-water look at a self-centered British art expert who takes a trip to southern America so he could pick up a priceless Renoir which somehow surfaced there. Only problem, is that he'll have to get past a group of reckless hillbillies and crazies in the process. The film was poorly written, and some parts didn't seem scripted at all. Day Lewis' character is so unappealing, that the only thing left to root for in the movie is hopes that this painting will come away undamaged. I tried to channel surf to see if something else was on, just to get away from watching this horrible wreck.I haven't talked to very many people about this film, but those I've had said they have never seen it or heard of it. It figures.