a comedy-poker film immediately sounds like a flop but this delivers and has some genuinely funny moments. There's a great cast here and some great cameos to boot, David cross and chris parnell, perhaps two of the lesser-known "stars" had me in stitches at times. You can easily enjoy the movie with no knowledge of poker but Hold-em players will appreciate some of the intricacies on the tables and some cameos from poker greats with some scenes unashamedly hamming up ESPN"s World series of poker coverage. There's great chemistry between all the leads which is what you would expect from good actors but Zak penn deserves credit for making a good film and should do more work behind the camera on this evidence.

The main reason I rented The Grand from the video store was because of the huge amount of stars in this movie. First you have Woody Harrelson, David Cross, Gabe Kaplan, Ray Romano, etc. This movie is packed with a ton of stars that have made huge success in their own right. I thought that the movie was very solid and had a huge amount of laughs packed into it. The characters were develop first and then it all came to a head when the placed all of the main characters into the huge Grand poker tournament. I personally thought that writer Zak Penn did an amazing job with this script and letting the actors improvise was a well made decision.9/10

Yes, its silly, but so was Spinal Tap, which The Grand owes a debt to in many ways.Gabe Kaplan is hilarious as the father of two poker pros and Dennis Farina has the old time Vegas hood down pat. Phil Gordon, the best live teacher in poker, has some great lines as the tournament commentator.You will spot a friend or yourself in one or more of the players, and the cameos are fun, including Phil "the hillside strangler" Laak as he was introduced..If you like poker and still have a funny bone, this is as good as it gets.

Great cast Chris Parnell, David Cross, Jason Alexander, Werner Herzog, Cheryl Hines(of Curb Your Enthusiasm), among others all in an improv comedy about the world of poker. All actors are at the top of their game here, but by the end of the movie almost everything has gone flat. The final game in the movie was apparently a real game where the character who won, won the movie, which though novel and interesting in theory, makes the actors in their final scene all but abandon the characters they'd been developing and try to really play (with a minimum of interaction), which unless your interested in poker isn't very fun to watch. The first half of the film where we are introduced to the characters is all funny enough, but there's no follow through here. If you like Christopher Guest movies, and improv comedy, or else love poker, this is for you.