Hackman hits hackdom in 'Mooseport'

"Welcome to Mooseport" can't make up its mind. It wants to be a political satire and a romantic comedy simultaneously, but each genre detracts from the other so much that everything bottoms out. This would be a good movie if it had simply chosen one way or the other.\nThe always-entertaining Gene Hackman is Monroe "The Eagle" Cole, a fresh-out-of-office president who is always reminding people he left the White House with the highest favorability ratings in history. Cole was also divorced while in office, and his ex-wife has seized their home, leaving him with the summer home in the hamlet of Mooseport, Maine.\nThe city council beseeches him to run for mayor once he arrives, and he accepts when he sees the unopposed election as a chance for fantastic public relations. Unfortunately for Cole, the local town plumber Handy Harrison (Ray Romano) also declared his candidacy.\nCole inadvertently asks Handy's long-time girlfriend Sally (Maura Tierney) out on a date. She's waiting on Handy to ask her to marry him, but accepts Cole's offer to invoke jealousy and prod Handy along. The race for the mayoral, and Sally's affection, is on then.\nRomano plays Handy with the same aw-shucks, hapless heroics with which he plays the lead character on his television show "Everybody Loves Raymond." This is his film acting debut (unless you count his voice-work in the animated "Ice Age"), and it's the kind of role which fits his dry humor well.\nThe entire cast is very likable. Many of the smaller, side characters are almost more engaging than the leads, such as Rip Torn as Cole's Machiavellian campaign manager and Marcia Gay Harden in an unusual comedic turn as Cole's personal assistant. Christine Baranski in a cameo as Cole's icy, conniving ex-wife steals most laughs.\nBut the likeability of its actors is all this movie has going for it. Why didn't screenwriter Tom Schulman, who wrote the brilliant "What About Bob?" and won an Oscar for writing "Dead Poet's Society," do more with these interesting characters? I also don't understand why he and director Donald Petrie took so long setting the story up. At times it's so slow it's infuriating; the real laughs only start coming in the last half hour of the movie.\nThe ignored potential of a movie like this really bothered me. I'm sure if "Mooseport" had a clearer objective and incorporated its thankless performances, it would have been a funnier, sharper and all-around better movie.