Edward Norton, making his directorial debut, shares screen time with Ben Stiller in the roles of boyhood pals who've gone separate but parallel ways -- priest and rabbi -- as hip, happening, new, now, popular, popularizing, palm-slapping types of clergymen. In short, "the God Squad." Then the Third Musketeer from their youth, the girl they haven't seen since junior high, comes back into their lives, forming a smirky, sniggery romantic triangle. The worst of the silliness (the rabbi passes out at a circumcision, the priest bonks a parishioner on the head with the swinging censer, sets fire to his own vestment, jumps into the font of holy water to put it out) settles down before long, and Jenna Elfman remains a gifted comedienne even when miscast as a sleek high-powered workaholic. Glibness and superficiality, however, prevail throughout. We might have thought that Norton, who after all has acted for Woody Allen, Milos Forman (seen in a cameo role here), John Dahl, and David Fincher, would have wanted as a filmmaker to position himself somewhere near the much coveted "edge" and well away from the middle of the road. Our mistake. With Anne Bancroft, Eli Wallach. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd
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