Drowning Mona

REVIEW
A good premise that is rarely fulfilled, Drowning Mona tries desperately to recapture the fun and dark humor of Ruthless People, DeVito and Midler's hilarious first film together, but their reunion unfortunately lacks that film's wit, timing and discipline. Midler is Mona Dearly, who at the film's beginning sails off a cliff in her new Yugo into the depths of a local lake. It soon becomes apparent it was murder. But who did it? Through a series of flashbacks, it looks as if the whole town had reason to bump the mean-spirited Mona off -- from her cheating spouse (Fichtner) to her slacker son (Thomas) to his doormat business partner (Affleck) to the waitress (Curtis) having the affair with Mona's husband. It's up to DeVito as the town's sheriff to figure it out. The scenario is ripe for black comedy, but director Gomez has little command for either frantic farce or subtle comedic escapades, and as such most of the comedy just sits there -- despite an eager cast. Though this is a helluva sight better than Midler's other 2000 comedy Isn't She Great, this is nevertheless disappointing considering what it could have been.