First Hit: Mildly entertaining in very few places.
Harry (played by Colin Firth) feels unappreciated as a lowly art appraiser and employee of egoist Lionel Shahbandar (played by Alan Rickman).
To get his boss back he thinks of a plan to duplicate a Monet piece where the original is currently in Texas and owned by PJ Puznowski (Cameron Diaz). Harry gets PJ to be part of the plan by telling her she will get a $500,000 if she pretends to sell her Monet to Shahbandar for $12 M.
What will really happen is that they will sell a forgery made by Major Wingate (played by Tom Courtenay). In this very lame comedy things go array with their plan but, as expected, come together in the end. Wading through the wasted screen time for the few real funny bits (Harry in an old woman’s hotel room with no pants) is painful.
Firth is occasionally funny but more time is spent on being in no-man’s land. It is like we have to wade through a lot of junk to get to any good stuff. Rickman is simply not a good comedic film villain. Diaz is OK, occasionally funny, but mostly seems pressed to make this film work. Ethan and Joel Coen didn’t create much of a screenplay and it was probably made worse by the lazy and unfocused direction of Michael Hoffman.
Overall: This was a time waste.