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MOVIE REVIEW

Serving Sara

MPA Rating: PG-13-Rating (MPA) for crude humor, sexual content and language.

Reviewed by: Megan Basham
CONTRIBUTOR

Moral Rating: Very Offensive
Moviemaking Quality:
Primary Audience: Teens Adults
Genre: Comedy
Length: 1 hr. 39 min.
Year of Release: 2002
USA Release:
Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley in “Serving Sara”
Featuring Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley, Bruce Campbell, Amy Adams, Vincent Pastore
Director Reginald Hudlin
Reginald “Reggie” Hudlin
Producer Dan Halsted
Distributor Distributor: Paramount Pictures Corporation. Trademark logo.Paramount Pictures Corporation, a subsidiary of ViacomCBS

After viewing “Triple X” a couple of weeks ago and “Serving Sara” this week, I’m beginning to suspect that Hollywood, perhaps in an effort to save money in our struggling economy, is secretly hiring fourth-grade boys to write all their scripts. I thought no one could pen lines more pre-adolescent than Vin Diesel’s coolest-kid-in-the-elementary-school insults, but Serving Sara’s authors were more than up to the challenge. You tell me—does the following piece of opening dialogue sound like it could have come from the playground or not: --“Kiss my butt.”—“I can’t, my lips aren’t big enough.” I kept waiting for all the other characters to turn around and say “oooh, burn!” I promise you—it doesn’t get any more mature, and it gets a lot more vulgar, throughout the rest of the movie.

Truly, “Serving Sara” was such a silly waste of time, I hardly feel compelled to analyze it. But to provide some frame of reference for your date-night movie choices, here’s the basic plot: a spoiled, trophy wife (Elizabeth Hurley) finds she has become “the older model” to her Texas husband and is served divorce papers by processor Matthew Perry. After she offers him one-million dollars, Perry agrees to set aside her papers and serve her husband first so that she can get a better divorce settlement. Naturally, there are several bad guys out to foil their plan, and I’m sure we can all guess how, after plenty of banjo-scored hijinks, everything turns out.

I had high hopes for this film, and its kind of a shame because the premise seems to have a lot of slapstick potential. Unfortunately, “Serving Sara” boasts nothing, including Matthew Perry, that can save it from a late-night Comedy Central fate. Both Perry and Hurley phone in their performances—although I should say Hurley appears to relish her “white trash” costumes (their words, not mine) in a particularly wriggly way. I suppose I can’t lay all the blame for this disaster at her or Matthew Perry’s feet, considering they had absolutely no quality material to work with. However, while I may not be able to question their acting abilities, I can certainly question their judgment. With a script that goes for the cheap laugh and predictable outcome at every turn, I’d rather stay home and watch “Friends”.


Viewer CommentsSend your comments
Negative
Negative—Quite a waste of my time. The attempts at humor didn’t work, and I can’t get over Matthew Perry with his arm stuck up a bull’s butt.
My Ratings: [Very Offensive / 1]
Billy, age 26
Negative—Poorly written, poorly acted, not funny, save your money!
My Ratings: [Very Offensive / 1]
Harold Watkins, age 49
Comments from young people
Positive—Well, even though many other people seemed to like this movie, I particularly enjoyed it!!! I thought that it was funny, although I didn’t exactly appreciate all the swear words that were used in this film. When my friends and I went to see this movie, I became stuck between my friends, and little children that looked like they were in 3rd grade.

I thought that, at first, I was going to be annoyed through the whole movie, until I heard a lot of swearing going on, and their parent that brought them was laughing with his children at the swearing. Sure, I thought that some of the swearing was OK; No “F” words or anything, but I can definitely say that this movie is not for children. Leave them at home, and go and laugh your butt off at “Serving Sara.”
My Ratings: [Average / 3½]
Noah Cowart, age 15