Guest who's coming to dinner?: "The Big Picture"

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this post because (a) I found this movie a tad disappointing and (b) I still haven't forgiven Kevin Bacon for the gratuitous penis display in "Wild Things." Dude, that movie was going pretty well with all the twists and turns -- and Denise Richards showing us her goodies -- before you unleashed your sausage. Keep it with Kyra, a$$hole.

Our story has the boyish Bacon -- post-"Footloose," pre-"River Wild" -- as a film student who wins an award and immediately gets wooed by producers and agents. Unfortunately, this also means he gets sucked into the whole Hollywood morass, where nothing is his own and he has to go along to get along. This includes flirting with a big-hair Teri Hatcher.

(Sidebar: Seriously, has she ever looked hotter than she does now at age 41 in "Desperate Housewives?" She wasn't all that back in the "Lois and Clark" days, and her nude scene in "Heaven's Prisoners" was hugely disappointing. But now that she's got four decades under her belt, she's smokin' -- that is, when she's not annoying, which is never. Let's move on.)

It's all rather fun to watch young Kevin be corrupted by the always-enjoyable J.T. Walsh -- rest in peace -- and eventually fall from grace, only to pick himself up, dust himself off and ultimately be in a position to triumph. Written (in part) and directed by Christopher Guest, there's all sort of wit and and a few inside jokes here; it's fun to see Elliott Gould in a student film and Martin Short as Bacon's bizarre agent. All in all, this is not a hard movie to watch and appreciate, if only for the knowing insight into the hoops one must go through to get a movie made.

My problem is that I've seen a few other Christopher Guest movies, and they all were better satires than this. It's not his fault, really, but it's hard to appreciate "The Big Picture" when he did such a better job with "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind." And it's not the same thing as saying, "Well, how can you enjoy 'Reservoir Dogs' after seeing 'Pulp Fiction?'" With an action/thriller movie, the rough edges almost work in its favor. But comedy is more hit and miss and harder to forgive, and I found myself wanting with "The Big Picture." But hey, at least Bacon kept his bacon in his britches.