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SERVING SARA

[Serving Sara] With a lite touch, a slapdash pace, and a silly sensibility, Reginald Hudlin (House Party) introduces us to the human side of process servers. Matthew Perry (Chandler on Friends) is Joe, a litigator's henchman who, with a touch of guile, serves up the kill -- legal papers. It's all one big process-serving sport until Joe must serve Sara (Elizabeth Hurley) divorce papers from her two-timing Texas cattleman husband. Sara figures out that hubby's cheating isn't confined to adultery -- he's trying to do her out of half of the posh cow pie. So she bribes Joe with a mix of money and cleavage and the two team up to try to serve him first, thereby ensuring she gets half.

High jinks ensue: they're chased by cattlemen thugs; they career through airport baggage belts; they masturbate an impotent bull -- and, yes, they eventually share an unlikely kiss. The humor has delightfully stupid elements of The Nutty Professor: quippy cultural jabs at the French are juxtaposed with a slobbery schlub lawyer's antics while his Italian hit-man-esque process server oafishly ogles bikini-clad women in Miami. But the film drags on through endless chase scenes that, mercifully, culminate in a Monster Truck Rally. Quick-paced though it may be, Sara just doesn't serve it up fast enough. (98 minutes) At the Entertainment (Swansea), Opera House, and Showcase (Warwick Mall and North Attleboro).

By Nina Willdorf

Issue Date: August 30 - September 5, 2002