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Starring Billy Crystal, Gheorghe Muresan. This is the world's first comedy that's humor is based totally on height differences--Danny Devito's films aside. If you don't see yourself making the statement, "Look at the 5'7" Billy Crystal next to the 7'7" Gheorghe Muresan! That's really funny," chances are better than average that you're going to find My Giant a waste of time, money, and the necessary amount of energy it takes to try and understand what Muresan is saying, each and every time he opens his mouth. For example, in Muresanese, the letter 'A' is pronounced "aauugghh". As are the letters 'G', 'L', and 'X'.My own opinion about this film is that screenwriter David Seltzer was watching TV one weekend, saw Muresan in that Snickers bar commercial, and figured if big Gheorghe could be funny for 15 seconds, he probably could be funny for two hours, and then wrote the screenplay. And thus, we are presented with My Giant, a most unfunny film about a man whose defining character trait appears to be that he is big. Crystal stars as a talent agent who has a wife, a kid, a nice house in the suburbs, a nice car, but is almost totally broke. So he travels to Romania (is this still even a country?) to bring an ice cream cake to one of his few remaining clients. The client, I suppose wanting cookies instead, fires Crystal, and Crystal, depressed that he might have to actually get another job, or sell off his house to make ends meet, accidentally drives off a cliff. He is pulled from his cars wreckage by Muresan, which begins their unusual friendship/partnership, with Crystal successfully lobbying for Muresan to take villainous roles in action movies. My first problem with My Giant came with the obstacles, or completely lack thereof, that the characters faced. If you're Indiana Jones, and you're running for your life with a boulder the size of Orson Welles tumbling down a hill after you, the challenges you face are fairly obvious. However, while obstacles aren't always this easy to spot, they are present to some degree or another in most, if not all, of enjoyable and moving films; characters inevitably have fears to deal with or hurdles with which they must deal. In My Giant, the obstacle that Crystal and Muresan face is a time deadline: they must make it to Las Vegas by a certain time, or Muresan will not be cast as the bad guy. Crystal's character does undergo a sort of Jerry Maguire like rehabilitation, finding his morals and scruples, but this itself is quite muted since Seltzer never took any pains to show the viewer that Crystal had lost these virtues in the first place. My second problem with My Giant came with its open ending. Throughout the first hour and a half, we have come to sympathize with Crystal's character for not having any money. His bank accounts are overdrawn, he begs relatives for $500, and he pawns a family heirloom to buy bus tickets to get Muresan to Las Vegas so Muresan can get into the action flick being filmed there. However, in a curious turn of events, when Crystal and Muresan finally reach Las Vegas and a studio lawyer offers Muresan a three picture deal with a "big back end", Crystal turns the contract down. This is very nice and pleasant and charming and refreshing to see, but this is also very stupid and idiotic and dumb to expect an audience to accept his characters decision, especially given the fact that no explanation is given to where Crystal will get money to put food on the table for his family, or what will happen to Muresan. Even an immensely entertaining, self-deprecating cameo by Steven Seagal couldn't save this film. Crystal seems uncomfortable on-screen, and though Muresan has a weird, freaky sort of panache, he doesn't express many more facial expressions than he does while sitting on the Washington Wizards bench in his warm-ups, watching Jordan and the Bulls kicking the ever loving crap out of his team. If you listen carefully, you can still hear the echo of My Giant's huge thud as it flopped to the ground. Of the two NBA stars go to Hollywood Movies, He Got Game is the only choice. See He Got Game.
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