“Saving Silverman” centers on three life-long friends Darren (Jason Biggs), Wayne (Steve Zahn) and J.D. (Jack Black) who are consumed with anything and everything Neil Diamond. Their house is littered with Diamond paraphernalia and when they aren”t sitting around watching television and getting drunk, the three play gigs on the street as a rocking Neil Diamond cover band. Life, it seems, couldn”t get much better.
- Paul Wong
- Saving Silverman”” is the latest movie about a Neil Diamond cover band trying to make it in a Guns “N Roses cover band kind of world. It”s vile trash.<br><br>Courtesy of Columbia Pictures
But wouldn”t you know it, things take a turn for the worse. Darren gets set up with Judith (Amanda Peet) a manipulative control freak, and the two soon fall in love. Problem is, Judith doesn”t go for Wayne and J.D. and tells Darren that if he wants to stay with her, he can no longer hang with his boys. Being the whipped puppy that he is, Darren chooses Judith over his fellow band mates. And a Neil Diamond cover band just can”t quite rock out minus their lead singer.
Wayne and J.D. put their heads and collective brain together and come up with a plan kidnap Judith and stop Darren from marrying a woman that they know isn”t right for him. Complicating matters is that fact that Darren”s high school sweetheart is about to take her vows to become a nun (she spends her free time lifting weights with the sisters seriously) and J.D. and Wayne are pushing hard for the old pals to reunite.
Nothing in this movie works. The jokes aren”t funny, the writing is awful and the acting is worse. Things are so bad that by the time this baby wraps up with a musical number featuring (believe it or not) the real Neil Diamond jamming with his cover band, we are on our knees in thanks that the pain has stopped and the movie is at long last over. Ninety minutes never felt so long.
Jason Biggs, who seems as if he will be forever known for his love scene in “American Pie,” plays the same lovable loser that”s become his calling card. Biggs cannot act to save his life, so if Hollywood is determined to keep him in movies, some acting lessons will be in order.
Same goes for Amanda Peet, a beautiful face who looks like she was created on the same day as Denise Richards and Amelia Heinle. Don”t feel too jealous, though, because what God gave Amanda in looks, he took away from her in talent. Peet”s stale delivery and weak attempts at physical comedy reduce her to nothing more than a good-looking set piece, that is until she gets one of her teeth popped out in a fist fight.
Jack Black (“High Fidelity”) and Steve Zahn (“Out of Sight”), two one-note performers who can be very funny when used sparingly, both outwear their welcome early on and become more annoying as the film progresses.
The fact that a movie that centers on a Neil Diamond cover band was actually made is pretty pathetic. However, pathetic cannot even begin to approach the vicinity of the tripe that is “Saving Silverman.”