Happy, Texas

(Miramax)

This American independent directed and co-written by first-timer Mark Illsley starts off as a zany, lunatic farce -- three prisoners stuck together on a chain gang, one of them a mass murderer -- and turns slowly into a bland, middle-of-the-road romantic comedy. Jeremy Northam and Steve Zahn make for a kind of oily Dean Martin/Anglo Cheech Marin duo who hang out in small-town Texas waiting for a chance to rob the local bank. But both are soon enmeshed in amour (Ally Walker, Illeana Douglas), whereupon the laughs deplete.