BY LARRY CARROLL | Do you remember that James Belushi movie, Mr. Destiny? How about the Nick Nolte/Martin Short film, The Three Fugitives? Or, more recently, the Jackie Chan/Owen Wilson flick Shanghai Noon? What these movies have in common is that they're not particularly bad, but they aren't particularly good, either. If you've seen any of them, you probably enjoyed yourself somewhat, but had forgotten the majority of the film by the drive home. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody, anywhere, who would feel strongly enough to call any of these films either "good" or "bad". Watching them is like bumping into an old high school chum at the mall - they are kind of amusing for a little while, but it's not like you want to make a habit of hanging out together.

I bring them up to give you an idea of what Big Trouble is - perfectly enjoyable, instantly forgettable, nothing to write home about. Based on the best-selling novel by Pulitzer Prize winning humorist Dave Barry, the film has an incredible cast including (deep breath here) Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Jason Lee, Stanley Tucci, Janeane Garofalo, Dennis Farina, Tom Sizemore, Johnny Knoxville, Patrick Warburton (another deep breath), Heavy D, Omar Epps and many more. You can't blame any of them for the movie being so, well, mediocre, because they all do a fine job bringing this slapsticky material to life. And you can't really fault director Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty) either, who does an admirable (albeit pedestrian) job managing fourteen principal characters and their storylines.

The main character (based on screen time) is Eliot Arnold (Allen, Galaxy Quest), a former newspaper columnist who now works in the advertising business. Eliot has a son named Matt (Ben Foster, Get Over It) with whom his relationship could be referred to as strained - on a good day. Matt and his friends at school play a game called "Killer" which is like tag but with water guns. Matt goes to "kill" his friend Jenny (Zooey Deschanel, "Mumford") at her family house, but unfortunately he picks the same time to do this that two hitmen (Farina, Sidewalks of New York and Jack Kehler, The Big Lebowski) are trying to kill Jenny's father Arthur (Tucci, America's Sweethearts) with real guns.

Arthur is unhappily married to Anna (Russo, Showtime) and constantly trying to suck on the toes of his beautiful maid Nina (Latin American television star Sofia Vergara, making her American film debut). All of these shootings bring together Eliot and Anna, who are instantly attracted to each other. They also attract the attention of two police officers (Warburton, Joe Somebody and Garofalo, Mystery Men) and two more FBI agents (Heavy D, Cider House Rules and Epps, Brother). That's as good a plot summary as I can come up with, and I still haven't even mentioned the two inept criminals (Sizemore, Saving Private Ryan and Knoxville, TV's Jackass) and the guy that sleeps in a tree and is often confused for Jesus (Lee, Almost Famous).

The funniest of these characters is the hitman, played by Farina. While he may not be the most versatile actor in the world, Farina is just so good at doing what he does that you can't help but get excited every time you see his name in a movie's opening credits. Here he's fast-talking, fearless and someone who doesn't suffer fools - all the things you'd expect from him. I'll never be able to see men smoking cigars again without thinking about this great sequence where Farina's tough guy confronts some characters whose smoke is getting in his face. The film is set in Miami, and Farina keeps bumping into obnoxious people like these that he has no tolerance for. The fact that Farina can't stand the place is a great running joke.

Also overflowing with gag material is Jason Lee's Puggy, the narrator of the film who wanders the earth looking for adventure and bags of Fritos. Lee is another guy who, while not having tremendous range, is thoroughly entertaining when cast in the right role, as he is here. His charm, smile, and warm sincerity is used to full effect. His romance with Nina, innocent and sweet, is also a lot of fun to watch.

Another person worth mentioning is Deschanel, an actress who comes across as the finest teenage cynic this side of Thora Birch. Deschanel gets some great lines and manages to shine brightly among a big-name cast that could have easily swallowed her performance whole. Particularly fun is a scene when she militantly confronts Matt and his friend, instructing them not to look at her butt as she walks away.

Johnny Knoxville, in his first sizeable film role, shows a great deal of comedic potential that unfortunately remains untapped by the film. His teaming up with Sizemore is one of the more inspired couplings in a movie that seems to subscribe to the Noah's Arc theory of two-by-twos (The FBI guys, The cops, the hitmen, etc.), but Knoxville ends up playing second banana and doesn't have much to do but stand around and look dumb.

For the two people who you would think would be the stars, Allen and Russo have remarkably little to do with the good parts of the film. While everyone else is allowed to be zany caricatures they act as the anchors to reality, and as a result come across as boring. If you're a fan of either of these actors and planned on seeing the film just for them, you'll most likely be disappointed.

Director Sonnenfeld has done the best work of his career translating Elmore Leonard crime stories to the big screen, and there are many elements of this story that are Leonard-esque. Leonard is a master at making seedy scumbags seem like people you'd know by giving them strange, quirky eccentricities. Big Trouble, however, is a much more absurd story that Leonard would ever tell, and any hints of real danger are undermined by the quantity-over-quality attitude that Sonnenfeld applies towards the jokes.

You can't really blame Sonnenfeld for wanting to flood his audience with humor, because there are few people in the world who are as funny as Dave Barry. Fans who are familiar with his skewed observations on everyday life will not be disappointed in the voice that Barry retains throughout the movie. His observations on Miami, automatic seatbelts and psychedelic toads are what elevates Big Trouble up to its highest levels. However, if you live by the sword, you die by it too and Barry's storyline relies too heavily on goofiness, only dealing with the plot when it absolutely has to.

It is because of this neglect that the plot just flounders around like a goldfish trying to find its bowl. Arthur tries to buy a bomb in a briefcase, which is then stolen by the two criminals who are so dim that they make those guys on World's Dumbest Criminals look like Stephen Hawking. These two don't even realize what they have (everybody who sees it thinks it's a garbage disposal), but they know there must be some value to it since everyone wants to get it back from them. So, after everybody runs around frantically for an hour, the criminals sneak it onto a plane and attempt to leave the country. There are two problems with their plan, however - the bomb is ticking, and Eliot is having delusions of John McClane and has jumped onto the aircraft.

At this point, all the clever Dave Barry jokes take a backseat to a thoroughly uninvolving action sequence that's neither funny nor exciting. The good faith created in the film thus far keeps things from completely falling apart, but all that potential ends up being replaced by a lame running gag about how the pilot keeps forgetting his airline number and an Air Force One "Get off my plane!" ending.

Anyone who's been interested in how the events of 9/11 have impacted the film industry will no doubt remember this movie as one of the films that was due to be released last year but instead was pushed back for fear that the theme hit too close to home. While Big Trouble is a comedy, it has scenes involving the aforementioned bomb being snuck past clueless airport security guards and put on a plane, and this could make some viewers squirm in their seats. Even if you aren't a squirmer, the attempts at humor in these scenes most likely won't do anything for you except serve as a reminder of an innocent time when jokes could be made about airline security. For a film that was delayed more than six months, however, you'd be surprised at how much sensitive material remains.

In a way, Big Trouble has sort of been blessed by all the bad publicity involving its plot and the similarities it has to the events of 9/11. A mildly enjoyable trifle, the film would have otherwise quickly disappeared from the minds of movie lovers. Instead, ten years from now it will probably still be remembered, forever marked with a tragic footnote. And who, besides me, remembers The Three Fugitives?

GRADE: C+