Grade: C

The title of “A Guy Thing” certainly represents truth in advertising–the crassness and slapstick violence that constitute a goodly portion of the script, though more benignly delivered than is often the case nowadays, will surely appeal more to the young males that make up much of today’s moviegoing audience than to their girlfriends, some of whom at least will blush at the goings-on their dates are chortling over. The picture is a pretty lame, crude affair, filled with clumsy coincidences, stupid contrivances and sitcom characters, but the agreeable cast make it more palatable than it would otherwise have been.

Jason Lee, laid-back and likable as usual, plays Paul, an advertising exec about to tie the knot with beautiful Karen (Selma Blair), the daughter of his hard-driving boss Ken (James Brolin). At the bachelor party hosted by his lustful buddy Jim (Shawn Hatosy), Paul bumps into a klutzy exotic dancer named Becky (Julia Stiles); and the next morning he finds her beside him in bed without any memory of how she got there. Paul tries frantically to keep the dalliance a secret from his fiancé, but that proves difficult when Becky turns out to be Karen’s cousin. There follow a series of labored comic episodes–many of them involving bathrooms and embarrassing physical disorders–that portray the poor fellow’s desperate efforts to hide the truth; many of them also include Becky, whose ex-boyfriend Ray (Lochlyn Munro), a maniacal cop, takes umbrage at Paul’s increasingly close relationship with her. Also on hand are Julie Hagerty and David Koechner as Paul’s determinedly lowbrow parents Dorothy and Buck, Jackie Burroughs as Karen’s hard-bitten old aunt Budge, and Larry Miller as a minister upset by Paul’s peccadilloes.

The ending of this “Thing” is never in doubt–there’s even a tangential figure on hand whose admiration for Karen is so overwhelming that it’s inevitable they’ll get together. And, of course, Paul and Becky bicker so charmingly that by the conventions of the genre they must be meant for one another. But it has to be said that the picture gets where you expect by stringing together a bunch of decidedly unlikely incidents. The result has very little logic and a great deal of crudity, but viewers who appreciate a Farrelly brothers style of farce, though somewhat tepid in execution, may be amused by it. The performers have been well chosen, too. Lee still seems more a perfect second banana than a leading man, but he shows a nicely ingratiating quality even in mediocre vehicles like “Stealing Harvard” and this flick; he certainly undergoes the myriad humiliations Paul endures with a sympathetic hang-dog face. Here, moreover, he has a better partner than he did in “Harvard.” That might be taken as a backhanded compliment, since anybody would be preferable to Tom Green; but Stiles, although given little to do besides pout and smirk, is nevertheless an attractive presence. Blair manages to keep Karen from becoming an irritating bore, and Brolin brings an appropriate measure of dumb pomposity to her father. (Brolin, by the way, seems to show up in every third film nowadays–perhaps he feels a need to get out of the house?) Hatosy plays the jerk without becoming disagreeable–a considerable feat– and Hagerty and Koechner manage to get through the sitcom-level shenanigans of Paul’s parents without too much embarrassment. Munro, though, comes on way too strong as the loony cop.

Even the finest farceurs, however, can do only so much with essentially crummy material; “A Guy Thing” is pitched at a very low comedic level, and while it often hits the target, that’s not much of an accomplishment. Technically the picture is okay, though the excessively perky score by Mark Mothersbaugh does try one’s patience. The setting of the story, incidentally, is Seattle, and it’s a measure of Chris Koch’s heavy-handed direction that periodically the camera pans in such a way as to provide an all-too-blatant shot of the famous Space Needle, apparently to remind us of where we are. It’s a nice-looking structure, but by the last time it shows up for the final time, its appearance is more like a cinematic eye-gouge than an amiable nod to the northwest.

Slapdash and silly though it might be, “A Guy Thing” would have been worse were it not for the performers.

Back in 1986 John Candy and Eugene Levy, who’d worked together on the SCTV series, made the leap to the big screen in “Armed and Dangerous.” They were actually a pretty good comedy team, but they could do little with the atrocious script which cast them as a couple of bumbling security men, and they understandably went their separate ways afterward. Who could have imagined that anybody might have thought that what we need now is essentially a remake of that unlamented turkey? Nonetheless that’s what we’re given in “National Security,” a slapsticky buddy action-comedy so bad that it’s hard to decide who’s dumber: the two guards at the center of things or the filmmakers who’ve put them there. (To rub our noses in the movie’s pedigree, Joe Flaherty, another SCTV alumnus, pops up briefly for a cameo as the security firm’s officious instructor.)

The unfortunate duo in this case consists of Earl Montgomery (Martin Lawrence), an LAPD recruit who’s tossed out of the academy because of his excessive zeal (rather than his irritation quotient which–given who’s playing him–is understandably high), and Hank Rafferty (Steve Zahn), a cop removed from the force (and jailed) as the result of a false beating accusation Montgomery had made against him. The obviously mismatched pair bicker and upstage one another after they’re accidentally thrown together against a big theft ring involving a dastardly kingpin (Eric Roberts, with horrendous bleached-blond hair) and some corrupt lawmen. Of course, they have to collaborate to survive and catch the villains. Much purportedly humorous mayhem ensues, and the guys inevitably become best buddies in the process.

This thoroughly predictable scenario (by a writing team whose previous masterpiece was the dreadful “Serving Sara”) manages the worst of both worlds: it’s cruelly unfunny, while offering a level of violence–mostly consisting of a series of flamboyantly destructive gunfights and vehicle chases–that will drown out any stray laughter that might occur. (In its treatment of race it’s peculiarly tasteless, too, not merely making a joke of the very real problem of rogue police but dealing with interracial romance in a fashion that seems totally phony in this context. And, of course, Lawrence is already a walking stereotype.) It’s all been flaccidly directed by Dennis Dugan, whose main contribution appears to have consisted in giving his stars absolutely free rein in the mugging department. It’s difficult to say which of the two wins the competition between them. Lawrence is his usual boisterous self, smug and motor-mouthed, and as always he’s awfully hard to take. Zahn tries to match him and pretty much succeeds, but at the loss of the goofy innocence he’s displayed in previous films like “Happy, Texas.” (The “serious” bits in which he agonizes over his dead partner seem out-of-place, too.) Roberts does the snarly bit with his customary oiliness, though the dye job really is a distraction; Colm Feore and Bill Duke are wasted as the obligatory higher-ups in the LAPD (which of them do you suppose turns out to be dirty?).

It’s possible that in the current post-9/11 world, some viewers may be lured into “National Security” in the mistaken assumption that the picture has something to do with keeping the country safe in an age of terrorism. But the greater danger is that they’ll be drawn to it in the misbegotten belief that it’s a comedy. In reality it’s just a loud, frantic and surprisingly mean-spirited mess.