Beyond the Multiplex

This festival has succeeded, far beyond anybody's initial expectations, in becoming a major cultural event. But Tribeca's success is based more on volume than quality. It hosts world premieres by the dozen, but not many of them, especially among the American narrative films, are worth making much fuss about. This is an important destination for documentaries, and over the past few years, festival director Peter Scarlet has brought in lots of adventurous foreign films for what may be their one shot at finding American viewers. (My favorite film from last year's festival was the rich and tragic Egyptian melodrama "The Yacoubian Building," which still has no U.S. distribution.)

Most of the indie features that end up at Tribeca, however, are films that didn't get into Sundance or Berlin or Cannes or Toronto. It's not like those four festivals never miss good stuff, but let's face it: The pool of filmmaking genius is only so deep, and the Tribecans end up scavenging what's left after the big guys have finished. So the more interesting entries are often high-concept oddities like "Live!" and, even more so, Zak Penn's cheerful improv-comedy film "The Grand," which is, God help us, another mockumentary and another attempt to spoof the unspoofable inanity of TV. (According to rumor, it's also one of the main acquisition targets at Tribeca this week.)

"The Grand" kicked off Tribeca's festival within a festival of sports films, cosponsored by ESPN. It's about poker, and I'm not sure who decided that was officially a sport. (At least darts, which is broadcast as a competitive sport in Britain, involves standing upright.) OK, "The Grand" isn't really about poker, although I guess the poker tournament seen within it is "real" (in the sense of unscripted and unrehearsed). It isn't really about anything except its cast goofing all over one another, but it's supposed to be, let's see, a behind-the-scenes film about a TV broadcast of the world's richest poker tournament, one in which Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson), the deadbeat scion of a casino-owning family, has vowed to recoup his family fortune and save the historic Plugged Nickel from the wrecking ball.

As my idol Joe Bob Briggs used to say, that's an awful lot of plot getting in the way of the story. Not to mention an awful lot of card playing. Possibly fans and scholars of ESPN's seemingly endless coverage of poker will find the gentle parody herein irresistible, but I find myself still mildly surprised that grown adults will sit and watch strangers play card games on television. Is backgammon next? Cribbage? Chutes and ladders? I guess I'd watch "Celebrity Candyland" if Eva Mendes were on it.

Presumably, the real point of all that structure and back story is to create absurd situations for Penn's roster of comedians and eccentrics -- from Harrelson and Werner Herzog to Cheryl Hines, Ray Romano, David Cross and Chris Parnell -- to ping-pong around in. Penn says that 90 percent of the film was unscripted, and I can believe it (for good reasons and bad). He has clearly done his time absorbing "Kentucky Fried Movie" and the early National Lampoon films, and there are some moments of inspired lunacy and enjoyably classic borscht belt shtick.

As a player always seeking an edge through outrageous behavior, Cross shows up at the tournament in a head-to-toe hijab, insisting to an official, "I converted to, uh, Muslim last night." Then there's Parnell, playing the number-crunching, possibly autistic poker geek who lives with his mom and always mumbles the following mantra at the table, right before sipping his special "brain drink": "It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion." (Contestants! Citations, please.)

Meanwhile, Hines plays a harried suburban mom who just might be the best player in the tournament (with Romano as her hapless, fantasy-football-obsessed husband), Richard Kind is the Internet poker demon from Wisconsin who has never played against live humans, and Dennis Farina is the Vegas old-timer who misses the kneecapping and mob hits. But the idea of Herzog as a coldblooded card sharp known only as "The German" is funnier than the execution, and you could say that about this movie as a whole.

Harrelson is a natural comic talent but not much of an improviser, and he never settles in; an entire subplot involving Michael McKean as a nefarious but dimwitted developer pretty much fizzles out. Some of the throwaway bits in "The Grand" -- like the great Gabe Kaplan, as the nebbishy dad to Hines and Cross' brother-sister poker-playing tandem, wandering around backstage wondering whether the deli table is fresh -- are funnier than the main action. Penn keeps the movie flowing in its brisk, bland, mildly frenetic style, and this film should have every chance of clicking with a guy-centric niche audience (unlike his last spoof-umentary, "Incident at Loch Ness," which was pretty much a dud).

Next page: Shot glasses, dominoes and the Korean mob