One Night at McCool's is a 2001 American dark comedy/neo-noir

Neo-noir

Neo-noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s.-History:The term Film Noir was coined by...

 film, directed by Harald Zwart

Harald Zwart

Harald Zwart is a Norwegian film director.Although born in the Netherlands, Zwart was raised in Fredrikstad in Norway. As early as age eight, he started making short films. He attended the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam where he received great acclaim for his student film Gabriel's Surprise...

 and starring Liv Tyler

Liv Tyler

Liv Rundgren Tyler is an American actress and model. She is the daughter of Aerosmith's lead singer, Steven Tyler, and Bebe Buell, model and singer. Tyler began a career in modeling at the age of 14, but after less than a year she decided to focus on acting. She made her film debut in the 1994...

, Matt Dillon

Matt Dillon

Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...

, Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas

Michael Kirk Douglas is an American actor and producer, primarily in movies and television. He has won three Golden Globes and two Academy Awards; first as producer of 1975's Best Picture, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and as Best Actor in 1987 for his role in Wall Street. Douglas received the...

, John Goodman

John Goodman

John Stephen Goodman is an American film, television, and stage actor. He is best known for his role as Dan Conner on the television series Roseanne for which he won a Best Actor Golden Globe Award in 1993, and for appearances in the films of the Coen brothers, with prominent roles in Raising...

, Paul Reiser

Paul Reiser

Paul Reiser is an American stand-up comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.-Early life:...

, Reba McEntire

Reba McEntire

Reba Nell McEntire is an American country music artist and actress. She began her career in the music industry as a high school student singing in the Kiowa High School band , on local radio shows with her siblings, and at rodeos. As a solo act, she was invited to perform at a rodeo in Oklahoma...

 and Andrew Dice Clay

Andrew Dice Clay

Andrew Dice Clay is an American comedian and actor who played the lead role in the film The Adventures of Ford Fairlane.Clay has been in several movies and has released a number of stand-up albums...

.

Plot

The majority of the film consists of Dillon, Goodman and Reiser's characters reciting their separate lovesick accounts of their experiences with Tyler's seductress character, each narrating over what they consider to be the real version of the recent events. Scenes are often re-enacted twice, with different accounts contradicting each other for comedic effect. For example, when Goodman's detective character is narrating, he acts as if he were a completely fair, by-the-book police officer, and Dillon is painted as a slimy, macho, abusive thug. When Dillon is telling the story, he is the innocent victim and Goodman is shown as a suspicious, prying, hard-nosed cop; Reiser's character is convinced that every woman is in love with him, and during his version of the tale, everyone acts accordingly.

Production

Writer Stan Seidel, who died prior to the film's release, drew much of the film's material from his days as a bartender at Humphrey's

Humphrey's Restaurant & Tavern

Humphrey's Restaurant & Tavern is a college bar near Saint Louis University, at Laclede and Spring Streets, that was the basis for the 2001 film One Night at McCool's, written by Stan Seidel, but the movie was not shot here as it was considered not appropriate for filming...

, a college bar located across the street from Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University

Saint Louis University is a private, co-educational Jesuit university located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. Founded in 1818 by the Most Reverend Louis Guillaume Valentin Dubourg SLU is the oldest university west of the Mississippi River. It is one of 28 member institutions of the...

 in St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis, Missouri

St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...

.

Reception

The film garnered mixed to poor reviews (Rotten Tomatoes rated it at 33%), with Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert

Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...

saying that the film "is so busy with its crosscut structure and its interlocking stories that it never really gives us anyone to identify with" but that "it has a lot of fun being a near miss."