Grade: F

Verdict: Save yourself. Don't go.

Details: Starring Jason Biggs and Amanda Peet. Directed by Dennis Dugan. Rated PG-13 for crude humor, coarse sexual innuendo and profanity. One hour, 30 minutes.

Rate it: Write your own review

Review: “Saving Silverman” is something quite rare: a 90-minute comedy without a single laugh. Not one single one.

I did smile slightly near the end, but I'm still wondering if that was because the movie got a little better or because it was near the end.

The plot, which you already know about 99 percent of if you've seen the trailer, focuses on three lifelong buddies: Darren (Jason Biggs), Wayne (Steve Zahn) and J.D. (Jack Black). Inseparable since grammar school, they're goofy, good-natured slacker/losers with a shared passion for Neil Diamond.

Then Darren falls for Judith (Amanda Peet), a gorgeous control freak with long legs and a short fuse. Two minutes after she and Darren meet, she's ordering his drinks. Six weeks later, she's ordering him to get some new friends.

Could things get worse for Wayne and J.D.? Yep. Darren wants to marry this monster. His pals vow to go to any lengths to stop him and divert his attention to Sandy (Amanda Detmer), a bubbly former cheerleader who's about to become a nun (funny!!!).

Let's enjoy some other merry moments:
A Neil Diamond impersonator from India.

Nuns who curse and lift weights.

A grave robbing in which someone says, “Omigod, this dead chick is really stacked!”

A character who decides he's gay because he likes Bette Midler and track lighting (hasn't that joke been around since 1978?).

“Saving Silverman” is the sort of silly schlock that a young Jim Carrey could've made weirdly hilarious (as he did “Ace Ventura”). But there's no young Jim Carrey in sight.

Instead, there's Biggs, who had more on-screen chemistry with a certain celebrated piece of pie than he does with any of his co-stars. And Zahn, who wore out his genial stoner bit two movies ago. And Black, an inexplicably popular cult figure (usually with fans of “Chuck and Buck”), who's just, well, there.

Peet is probably the best thing in the movie. Translation: She does the best she can with an idiotic part.

Finally, there's Diamond, doing a good-sport spoof of himself. Unfortunately, that includes a round of “Coming to America,” which reminds us why he didn't have a movie career after 1980's “The Jazz Singer.”

— Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution