Welcome to Mooseport (2004)

Monroe 'Eagle' Cole (Gene Hackman) is a popular ex-President in a nasty divorce with ex-wife Charlotte (Christine Baranski). He is moving into his summer home in Mooseport, Maine with his assistants Grace Sutherland (Marcia Gay Harden) and Bullard (Fred Savage). Handy Harrison (Ray Romano) is the amiable local hardware store owner and handyman. Sally Mannis (Maura Tierney) is his 6-year girlfriend tired of waiting for him. She catches the eye of the Eagle. The mayor dies suddenly and the town begs the ex-President to run. He runs for mayor but so does Handy. Word gets out in the press and he can't quit. Handy agrees to bow out until Sally accepts a date with the Eagle. Campaign manager Bert Langdon (Rip Torn) arrives and let the campaigning begins.This is a light comedy without many big laughs. Romano is perfectly nice and Hackman is fine. They don't have the needed wackiness to make this hilarious. It has its charm-like qualities but it is unwilling to push harder. This has the possibilities of a funnier movie.

Donald Petrie's political comedy is spot-on for me, i mean its not an amazing social commentary or anything, but it provides some good laughs, good performances, decent story and plot. I liked Schulman's wit some of the dialogues were pretty funny and Petrie's direction suited the comedic manner in which this film was intended for. Hackman was very good while Romano was not bad either much better here than Grilled, meanwhile Marcia Gay Harden, Fred Savage and Rip Torn were also pretty good. Overall a decent comedy, solid film, no complaints here, should have a higher overall IMDb rating in my opinion.-- IMDb rating: 5.3, my rating: 8/10

I somehow do not get it why some don't really like this. I mean, it's meant to be a comedy. Anyone living in a small town will kind of relate to this. I may be coming from someone growing up in an urban environment, but all the excitement of someone famous coming to live in a town is always so fun and surreal.Monroe 'Eagle' Cole (Gene Hackman) had served two successful terms as the president. All he wanted to do is to enjoy his retirement. But his arrival to his hometown of Mooseport had caused some spectacle of sorts.The last thing on Monroe's mind is to run for Mayor but then he was being persuaded by the local authorities to be one. But then he also had an opponent and it's in the form of local resident Handy Harrison (Ray Romano).What was meant to be a fair fight for the mayor position had led to an all-out war of sorts, given the ex-president is meeting Handy's girlfriend Sally (Maura Tierney). It was meant to be a casual meeting between Monroe and Sally about discussing about having a pet, but the media had made it into a spectacle. Also around the same time, the former first lady Charlotte Cole (Christine Baranski) had shown up in Mooseport to support Handy to be the mayor.On the polling day, it was quite a close fight. In fact, very close. It was like no surprise who won in the end.My knowledge of small-town politics is not that wide, but then I am aware of the humour being thrown into it.It's meant to be a fun movie, and nothing else. I do kind of like it.

As an avid fan of the genius that is Everybody Loves Raymond, i went in to this movie with a degree of optimism- and was dramatically let down.The worst thing is the character Ray Romano plays in this movie 'Handy,' well they might as well of called him Ray Barone because he is exactly the same character as he is in his famous sitcom only a plumber without kids and a wife. Good thing right? WRONG...he plays a hapless oblivious bumbling idiot, which instead of bringing out a lovable aspect,you cringe at how a this guy can be so infuriatingly simple.Probably most infuriatingly of all about his character is not his own doing, but his undying love toward the nightmare that is his girlfriend in this movie. What the heck does this guy see in this broad? I mean shes the nice ER girl don't get me wrong, but the things she does to him in this movie merits his leaving her immediately. Seriously, Ray sorry 'HAndy' turns up a little late from work so she gives him dogs abuse and he accepts it. She then happily while still supposedly going out with the ray guy starts dating the President. And she has the audacity to continue to stomp about like the bell of the ball and continue to give the ray guy dogs abuse for being quite forgivably bemused by her show of loyalty to the guy she was supposed to have been with for six years. Heck she even throws books stones underwear whatever household appliance landed on this poor dudes head. This brings us to the plot then we'll delve in to the disaster that was the stereotypical characters later. basically Andy (can i just call him Ray) is a kind, simple but happy small time guy who is the plumber of Mooseport, an obvious look at small-town America,a town in Maine. The movie starts off with literally everybody going 'Hi Handy' everybody loves....Handy? familiar pattern huh, anyway jam packed full of pointless gags later, we meet Gene Hackman acting as the popular ex-president. He is forced to run for mayor of Mooseport or whatever this place is called, to improve his finances after a messy divorce we're led to believe, and so needs to get his PR ship shape. Then Ray's girlfriend the pretty ER girl takes Gene's fancy and that convinces him. Ray is understandably miffed; yet the story takes the turn that basically Ray runs against Gene to win the girl. GAG ME. Most guys would look twice at the stunts his girl was pulling off and personally recommended the girl and the election to the rival. But Ray was determined. The rest of the movie follows the boring pattern of David morally triumphing over Goliath etc.Ray's character seemed more like the outtakes of his Ray Barone character, and his interaction with Hackman was about as spontaneous and funny as an episode of the Antiques Roadshow. Which is a tragedy considering how Hackman is one of the finest actors to grace the bigscreen in our lifetime. Yet he looked vacant in this role.And the ER girl seriously should have revised her role as she merited ridicule rather than a future gig in movie stardom. However Ray remained a small light of decency to this movie, he at times carried off the lovable simpleton well with his comic charisma which valiantly failed to turn which was a ridiculously bad script in to something watchable.You know the movie was off to a bad start when a random naked dude is running to start the movie, having no bearing on proceedings what some ever. Ray owns a pet Donkey which walks about the street; And we have the obvious nose 'gag' comparing Ray and the Donkey's nose- and that is about the extent of the intelligence to the humour. We even have gene Hackman say 'Unless Donkey's fly- i'm always going to be Mr. President...' wait for it, yup! guess what he sees when he looks out the window of his plane-no seriously- A donkey transported by a nearby helicopter. Thats what the film seemed like a bogged down relationship, election story with odd snippets of dreadful humour neither cynical, intelligent or goofy enough to be funny, it was just plain- turgid.To sum up i bought the movie in the supermarket for a couple of bucks, and that basically sums it up- its a bargain bin movie and a sad state of affairs for wonderful talent like Hackman. No doubt Ray as a great comic will find his niche, however on evidence of this movie he looked like a fish out of water without his wonderful co-cast from his Raymond sitcom.