Bad comedy is above history. Postponed after September 11 until the present time, when in theory the sight of morons hustling a nuclear bomb through airport security won’t disturb anyone, Big Trouble could have come out on September 12 and still would have had no impact on events or on the box office.

Barry Sonnenfeld continues his decline from the relative genius of Get Shorty and Men in Black in this adaptation of a novel by Miami Herald humor columnist Dave Barry. Tim Allen’s Eliot is a two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning (hey, it’s Barry’s novel: he can be generous) Miami Herald columnist who gets fired after putting his foot through an editor’s computer screen. And though that macho act is not enough to win over his spoiled son, Matt (Ben Foster), Eliot goes on to get tangled up in multiple inane plots involving a crooked foot-fetishist businessman (Stanley Tucci, from Big Night to big toe), his abused wife (Rene Russo), some hitmen (including Dennis Farina, a touch of class), random riff-raff (Tom Sizemore, out of uniform), an idiot hippie (Jason Lee), a psychedelic toad, etc. The press booklet declares that "These People [i.e., the cast] Are in Big Trouble." In every way.