Tomcats

The worry about staying down under is that cable is very expensive. With a practical brother, who doesn’t waste any money on things that are of no use to him, one is resigned to making do with the 12.365 channels that are on air. Some of the things which are much better back home. And the consequences include watching anything that is being played on the tube especially when you have nothing better to do during the day. Now you may argue that Melbourne is a huge city and there should be loads of stuff to do etc. But not after you have returned from a lovely trip of the Great Ocean Road and are lazing around at home with nothing to do. That’s when you fall victim to movies like Tomcats. And these chick flicks have an uncanny knack of baiting you to spend over 120 minutes peppered with ads. But then I was always aware of the hazard that I had in being an amateur movie critic. So no complaints but warnings galore for all my followers / readers out there.


Michael Delany (Jerry O’Connell) and 5 of his other mates are at a wedding. One of them is an ace at investments. In the excitement of the moment, they all make a pact that they would put aside small sums of money every month for an unplanned amount of time with just one condition – the person who is left unmarried will take the entire amount left over. Obviously those who get married would have to forfeit their monies. Interesting game I say – especially for our extra horny friend, Michael and the extremely creepy sex maniac, Kyle Brenner (Jake Busey). You see Michael is a cartoonist with heart and Kyle is some rich kid who apparently doesn’t have one – a heart that is. Wonder how there is a difference since both of them appear as excruciatingly horny as the other.

Now Mike finds himself in Vegas for some reason which I cannot remember (shows how riveting the movie was) and very soon with a hot chick who would be interested only in guys with big bucks. For my money’s worth she seems like the one who is entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that no one goes back home with money in their pockets. And with Mike desperately wanting to get her into bed, it is the easiest job on the planet. By the time the extremely hot Tricia (Jaime Pressly) and her husbad Steve (Horatio Sanz) get around to stopping him, he has lost $51,000!!!! And casino owners do not give up their moneys usually. Mike is given 30 days to return the money. After a lot of thinking, he is left with only one option, to get $500K from the “marriage fund” by getting Kyle married. This gets him to catch up with Natalie Parker (Shannon Elizabeth), a friend of Tricia, who has her own personal score to settle with Kyle. Kyle was responsible for taking Natalie’s virginity and then dropping him off like a hot cake on the highway with a little more than a few cents to get back home.

Tomcats is Gregory Poirier’s first effort at direction. And thankfully has last for a long time. Nothing else has come in from Poirier’s table since TomCats and it will be 10 years soon. I hope he doesn’t think of coming out with a 10th anniversary special with Tomcats 2 or something. Even writing stories doesn’t seem to be up his alley with just one reasonable attempt with National Treaure – Book of Secrets. The acting is obviously a compilation of wannabe B Grade actors who probably went on to become great porn stars or were already porn stars when the movie was made. I may sound very rude and don’t mean to hurt their sentiments but I guess that the fact that none of them ever landed up making a name for themselves in movies of any kind would be reasonably indicative of their capabilities. 2 on 10 for this one from my end.