The feature debut of writer-director Hue Rhodes is a pack-following independent film caroming from oddball to oddball: a midget boss, a sunny secretary surrounding herself with yellow Smiley Faces, a wheelchair stripper, a gun-toting militant nudist, a sideshow human fireball, and so forth. It's nice, or it ought to be, to see Steve Buscemi once again in a lead role, and he certainly has the casino pallor, not to mention the riverboat sideburns and the slicked-back hair, to pass as a recovering and relapsing gambling addict. But the anticipated laughs never come, and the transparent hommages to Dante — characters named John Alighieri, Virgil, and Lou Cypher (get it?) — bring only frowns. Romany Malco, Sarah Silverman, Peter Dinklage, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Tim Blake Nelson. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd
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