A family friendly movie, that doesn't need crude humor to be funny.Ray Romano plays a likable but flawed character, which also describesmost of his cohorts, his love interest, and even his "nemesis" (Gene Hackman).The comedy never resorts to slapstick , the situations are adult, yet G-rated.Highly recommended.

my gf and I were looking for a movie to watch and she decided to select this..i noticed gene Hackman starring thinking well gene makes good movies too many to mention here so why not ..so here is poor gene playing a president and who is his costar, the charisma free and comically challenged Ray Romano Every joke was lame and this movie was a good 30 minutes too long. The love triangle is staged and wooden and I thought out of this movie a better movie existed and that would have been the Christine baranski/gene Hackman characters who were more interesting than sad sack ray and laura Tierney who is good considering what she has to work with. the rip torn character was funny along with the rest of the presidential entourage..if they tried to use this movie to springboard ray romano's career well this bombed but that is good because it saved the public from more crap like this.

This was Gene Hackman's last movie role, and Ray Romano's first time on the big screen. Romano was good enough on television with "Everybody Loves Raymond", but he seemed at sea in this movie. Not that the story was anything to write home about.The story involves a just-retired two-term President who travels to the title small town when the current mayor dies in office. The President is divorcing his wife, and has a vacation home in the town which he wants to keep, so he runs for mayor in the special election. Meanwhile, the local hardware store owner played by Romano has his girlfriend ready to leave him, so he runs for mayor to impress her.This movie is not really about politics so much as a romantic comedy. It is at best mildly amusing, and if you want to be amused by Ray Romano, stick to reruns of the "Everybody Loves Raymond" show instead.

Before I watched the movie, I was not sure I wanted to watch a match-up between titan actor Gene Hackman and receeding standup comedian Ray Romano. I was wrong. Romano's un-pretentiosness was perfect for this part. It was Hackman who was unable to sedate himself enough to interface comfortably with small-town life. I'm sure that some of this incongruity is the result of the script and direction written for him, but the bluster was carried a bit far in the movie. This is not a bad movie. It is a rather good one. It turned out the opposite of what I expected, as I've already said. I appreciate the message imparted by Welcome to Mooseport: Honesty, consistency, humility and hard work are traits that are truly valued and valuable.., especially if your girlfriend is tougher than you.