The Grand Reviews

Summary The Grand is in the tradition of such improvisational comedies as Best in Show and This Is Spinal Tap. The story is set in the world of professional poker and follows six players who reach the final table of the world's second-most-famous high-stakes tournament, the Grand Championship of Poker. The Grand was improvised from a detailed tr...

• Comedy

The Grand is a fast and furious comedic attack that begs to be seen again. There’s just so much going on, it’s nearly impossible to keep up.

What makes The Grand a memorable comedy is that the main stories are really about families – how they screw you up and how they save you. And you don't have to understand poker to know the rules of that game.

It has a lot of affection for its screwy characters, and it has a cast worth watching even when the plot's held captive by a bunch of boring cards.

Wildly uneven but often quite funny, The Grand allows its actors to act out, get the "E!" out of their systems and give the Christopher Guest treatment to professional gambling without Christopher Guest, with whom it would have been funnier and a lot more acerbic.

Typical of bad improv, the inmates take over the asylum, leaving a movie that's little more than a loose, wildly uneven assemblage of individual comedic shtick.

Each of these improv farceurs wins a few laughs. But not enough.

It’s hard to believe that a lineup so stellar could generate so few laughs, but there it is.