Tomcats
Meraklii
Starring: Jerry O'Connell, Jake Busey, Shannon Elizabeth, Jaime Pressly, Tracy Kay Wolfe
Directed by: Gregory Poirier

Tomcats is the first title released under the banner of Revolution Studios, the creation of former Disney chief Joe Roth. As such, something special was required to announce that a new production powerhouse has been born.

What emerged is so special it has exceeded our wildest expectations and, lamentably, our darkest fears. Tomcats delves so deep into the depths of profanity that it almost manages to transcend bad taste. I must stress, however, that the key word is ALMOST, not transcend.

The premise is as old and lame as the world of film: a band of young men are terrified by marriage and fear any woman can become a wedge in their otherwise unspoiled friendship. In commendable business spirit they start a fund to which everyone contributes and which would end up in the hands of the last one who stays single.

Screen-time concentrates on the moment when the quest for the fund develops into a two-horse race between Kyle (Jake Busey) who, in an inexplicable writer's whim, comes out as a spectacular woman-hater who has women writhing at his feet, and Michael (Jerry O'Connell) who has a gambling debt and desperately needs money.

Meanwhile the fund has grown to $500,000, which suggests that the writer would have been better off consulting his fund-manager character about making money and thus sparing us the fruit of his pen, but no matter. Michael tracks down Natalie (Shannon Elizabeth), Kyle's gorgeous former girlfriend who seems the one woman Kyle might consider marrying.

No one will be surprised by the ensuing "romantic complication" which seems to have been plagiarized directly from the screen-writer's textbook.

One will be surprised and rightfully appalled at the treatment which is reserved for a testicle removed from it's owner in a surgical theatre. The whole sequence involving the above has a future in the museum of bad taste as the most senselessly outrageous idea ever, and one would have to struggle to fit it into any viable cinematic context.

Writer and first-time director Gregory Poirier (See Spot Run and Gossip) used to make a living for himself writing porn movies. That could explain, but not excuse his developing a distinctly demeaning attitude towards women, which is dangerously consistent and relentless in Tomcats. Women are treated here as if they are a universal evil that deserves nothing better than to be treaded upon. To call this bewildering would be an understatement.

This is a movie that tries to milk the lucrative niche discovered by "American Pie," but a maddening business approach to movie-making is applied here: the authors have not attempted to create a good film, they have tried to develop a competitive advantage. Tomcats never tries to be a better movie than American Pie, it is quite content with out-grossing it.

It is quite reassuring to see that the executives' bet on extreme toilet humour backfired handsomely (Tomcats bombed Stateside), yet an altruistic moviegoer or critic will bathe in cold sweat at the prospect of unsuspecting victims going to the cinema to see Tomcats.