"I used to have dignity!" screams Monroe "Eagle" Cole (Gene Hackman) about halfway through the awful new comedy, Welcome to Mooseport, as his campaign for mayor of tiny Mooseport, Maine, against Harold "Handy" Harrison (Ray Romano) gets ugly. You can imagine two-time Oscar-winner Hackman screaming the same thing at the producers of this limp, lame, laughless wonder, as he's forced to deliver painful joke after painful joke, play a crass and unsympathetic character, and generally make a bigger fool of himself than he did by putting on a dress in The Birdcage.
Not that anyone else in this disaster fares better. Romano, whose Everybody Loves Raymond is a sitcom staple, plays a more whiny and insecure version of his TV character, but it's not nearly as endearing as on the small screen. His Handy is the local plumber and owner of a hardware store in the Hollywood-style hamlet of Mooseport. Handy has got a girlfriend of six years, Sally (Maura Tierney), a veterinarian who's tired of waiting for commitment-phobe Handy to pop the question. The whole town is thrown into an uproar when former U.S. President Cole moves in, bringing with him simpering advisors (Marcia Gay Harden and Fred Savage), a shrill ex-wife (Christine Baranski, who will have "shrill ex-wife" on her tombstone) and a whole lot of media attention.
In yet another only-in-a-Hollywood-small-town twist, Mooseport's mayor up and dies just as Cole comes to town, and the goofy, old-town fathers want the venerable ex-Commander-in-Chief to fill the position. However, as contrivance would have it, just as Cole agrees to take the job as a good PR move, it comes out that Handy also has put in for the mayoralty out of a strong sense of civic duty. Handy is all set to back down in the face of such prestige until Cole, in what is clearly the impetus for most great political showdowns, hits on his girlfriend.
Thus, after a good 45 minutes of setup, the contest finally begins. Small-town politics are fertile ground for satire, and even with Mooseport's lighthearted tone, the film could have said something incisive about the clash between rural values and big-city politics (see, for example, Ivan Reitman's Dave). If not clever, stand-up comic Romano and the talented supporting cast at least could have come up with something amusing. But this is perhaps the blandest movie ever, directed so squarely down the middle of the road that helmer Donald Petrie might as well be painting yellow lines.
There is not a single funny joke in the entire film. There's the deaf old guy who yells all the time. There's the sassy, fat black woman whose sole purpose is to cock her head to one side and say, "Mmm-hmm." There are not one but two gags about microphone feedback at large town gatherings. None of the humor has anything resembling edge or wit. It's all like a bad sitcom stretched into nearly two excruciating hours.
Neither Handy nor Cole are particularly likable, so it's hard to care who wins the election or gets the girl. Not that it really matters, since every twist and turn can be seen coming from a mile away. Romano and Tierney have no chemistry, but they light up the screen compared to the ill-advised pairing of Hackman and Harden. While Hackman has bumbled through his share of stinkers in his lengthy career, Mooseport is far worse for Romano, who is just getting his feet wet in features as his sitcom winds down. If this is a sign of things to come, he'll be back on TV or the stand-up circuit in no time, ranting about how he, too, used to have dignity.