What happened to Luke Wilson’s career? Other than putting on weight (sorry, had to go there) and becoming a C-list actor who now does AT&T cell phone commercials to pay the bills?
In 1996 when Wes Anderon’s “Bottle Rocket” first hit the scene, if we had to bet which Wilson brother would become a star, we surely wouldn’t have put our money on Owen, but maybe life is funny like that. There was “The Royal Tenenbaums” which he was one of the leads in (and he even did the celeb dating thing with Gwyneth Paltrow), but after that it’s been diminishing returns that really culminated in absolute dreck like “Henry Poole Is Here” (easily one of the worst films of 2008), the Jessica Simpson-starring dumped-in-a-handful-of-theaters bomb, “Blonde Ambition” and then the straight to DVD release, “Tenure.”
Directed by George Gallo, Wilson’s latest follows the true life story of businessmen Jack Harris and Wayne Beering, who pioneered porn entertainment in the early years of the internet, getting in over their heads with a colorful collection of criminal personalities.
There’s some ostensibly great people in the cast, Luke Wilson and Giovanni Ribisi seem well-cast as a couple of booksmart nerds who think they can dabble in adult entertainment without repercussions, but we’re just not convinced at all (Ribisi is another massive underachiever). James Caan,Terry Crews, Kelsey Grammer, Laura Ramsey (please call me, I love you), Gabriel Macht, Kevin Pollak and Jacinda Barrett round out the cast too, but this film looks decidedly like a B-movie, just above straight-to-Video.
Gallo, a Hollywood lifer, last directed “My Mom’s New Boyfriend” which went direct-to-disc with Antonio Banderas and Meg Ryan if that’s any indication for you. Apparently this one comes out August 6th via Paramount. We’re kind of betting it’s dumped into theaters like Paramount did with “The Goods” last year.