By Biray Alsac
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 13, 1998

Fee-Fi-Ho-Hum

What do you get when you combine a 7-foot-7-inch basketball player who tries to act, a comedian with too many lines, a story with a predictable plot and an excruciatingly painful appearance from Steven Seagal?

You get an excuse to save $7.50.

Billy Crystal's newest film "My Giant" opened nationwide in theaters this weekend, but unfortunately it is not as gigantic as some people have hyped it up to be.

It's a mediocre story about a second class talent agent, Sammy (Crystal), whose entire energy is dedicated to representing talent in hopes that someday they reach the top and become famous. Too career oriented, he neglects his wife Serena (Kathleen Quinlan) and his son Nick (Zane Carney). In Hollywood, this familiar plot formula is commonly known as "the bad-hubby-bad-dad" scenario.

As his life begins to fall apart and his finances decrease, he finds himself broke and fired by a teen-age client in Romania of all places, the location of the film's shooting. Suddenly, by some miracle, Sammy is saved from death by Max, a man who's almost frighteningly tall standing next to Crystal. Eventually, Sammy realizes the potential of Max, who is in fact a giant, and convinces him to become an actor.

The two head to Hollywood where, by Sammy's estimation, Max is destined to become a movie star. Max gets exploited, Sammy gets a heart, Max goes back home, and Sammy becomes the perfect family man. Everyone lives happily ever after.

Crystal wrote, produced, and starred in this fairy tale. To tell you the truth, if it wasn't for Crystal's presence on the screen, this film would have been even worse. Although the entire movie was full of Crystal's famous one liners, he carried the movie with his comedic performance.

The role of Max was written with the late Andre the Giant in mind, who Crystal met and became friends with on the set of "The Princess Bride." And while he was no great thespian, I'm sure Andre would have pulled off the role more swiftly than does Gheorghe Muresan. He may be a good basketball player, but I have my doubts about his acting ability. Here's a little trivia to support what I mean: the film's producers changed the name of Max's love interest in the film from Angelica to Lilianna, because Muresan's wife's name is Lilianna and it helped him get into character more easily. They might as well have written a movie about basketball instead of a fairy tale about giants - that too would help him get into character. Muresan should stick to his career with the Washington Wizards, saying "I love this game" rather than reciting Shakespeare, which he butchered in several scenes throughout the movie.

The film overdid the height-size ratio factor between Max the Giant and everything else. I wouldn't have been surprised if they build everything on the set a bit smaller in order to accentuate his largeness. It gets old after a while. However, there was one scene that really had nothing to do with the plot of the movie but was used for comic relief. Max the Giant was put in a wrestling ring to fight five little midgets with bad attitudes. I still laugh out loud when I think about that. As Conan O'Brien recently said, "Hey, midgets are funny."

Unfortunately, not much else in this movie is quite as humorous as the wrestling scene. Best to save your money and wait till this one comes to a video store near you.