3/5 A few too many Jokers in the deck
  by Richard Ross
Borrowing the basic structure and plot of Christopher Guest's 'Best in Show', 'The Grand' is an improvised, ensemble driven comedy that follows a group of crazy competitors playing for big bucks in a poker tournament. The six featured players include : Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson), a drug addict who has been married as many times as he has failed rehab. His uncle left him his casino before he died but Jack lost it to a greedy developer (Guest regular Michael McKean) who plans on tearing it down and building a giant hotel with one room. Jack hopes to win enough money to save his uncle's legacy. Deuce Fairbanks (Dennis Farina) is old school Vegas who fondly remembers the kneecapping days as he zips around the casino on his scooter complete with a bottle of scotch and vanity license plate. Harold Melvin (Chris Parnell) is a nutcase who lives with his mom. An Internet player he's constantly chugging a dark concoction dubbed "brain juice" that his mother prepares for him daily. Andy Andrews (Richard Kind) is a lovable doofus who stumbled on a pro poker site while looking for antique fireplace pokers. Before he knew it he'd won the qualifying round and landed himself a seat at the Grand. The German (Werner Herzog) is a scary dude who arrives at the hotel with a luggage cart full of live rabbits. In the next scene he's shown gently petting one of the rabbits before admitting that he calms his nerves by killing something every day. Rounding out the field of players are brother and sister team Larry and Lanie Schwartzman (David Cross and Cheryl Hines). Raised by a competitive father (Gabe Kaplan), Larry has had to watch as Lanie has had more success than him and he burns silently each time his father shows up to their matches holding a sign for her. She is married to a lightning survivor (Ray Romano) whom she doesn't take seriously. There are too many characters and while the film has some funny moments many of them could have been eliminated. This would have freed up more screen time for people like Kind and Herzog. Both Parnell and Hines were hilarious on T.V. but it doesn't translate as well on the big screen. The Parnell character stops the movie dead in it's tracks and should have been cut entirely. Harrelson is decent in the lead but he has a few too many slurred speeches at the main table. The poker action isn't too exciting and not enough real life pros figure into the movie. With that being said there is a priceless scene between Kind and poker legends Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth. David Cross is his usual crazy/brilliant self and him and Gabe Kaplan have some funny and touching scenes together. Herzog is a blast as a man reduced to wandering the halls searching for his rabbit that ran away. There's some good stuff here that should please fans of this large cast but it's not a great comedy or that memorable of a film.

2/5 Not as funny as it wants to be
  by Gregory Baird (Morristown, NJ)
With a cast as talented as this, I had high hopes for The Grand. Alas, it did not live up to them. The actors are game enough, but every scene falls flat and fails to merit a smile, let alone a chuckle. You end up feeling embarassed for the performers more than anything else.

Skip this one. You'll be thankful that you did.

2/5 dull, unfunny comedy
  by Roland E. Zwick (Valencia, Ca USA)
"The Grand" is a mockumentary about six internet poker players who gather in Las Vegas for a $10 million, winner-take-all tournament.

A game, eclectic cast - Woody Harrelson, Hank Azaria, Chris Parnell, Ray Romano, Werner Herzog, Gabe Kaplan - struggles with a mediocre script that, in tone as well as in style, steals clumsily from all those far superior Christopher Guest movies like "Waiting for Guffman," "Best in Show" and "A Mighty Wind." In the case of "The Grand," the humor is largely lacking, as each eccentric character plays out his little assigned shtick over and over and over again.

As executed by writer/director Zak Penn, the poker scenes are particularly languid and lifeless and utterly incomprehensible to any non-poker players who may happen to be a part of the audience.

2/5 A Mockumentary that Falls Short
  by Jonathan K. Perkins (Harbor City, CA, USA)
I had no idea what to expect when I received "The Grand" to review. I had never heard of it. And seeing the cast of well-known actors (Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Cheryl Hines), I didn't have a good feeling about it. It's been my experience these are typically flops if I've never even heard of them.

My presumption turned out to be largely correct. "The Grand" is cut from the same cloth as "Best In Show", "Spinal Tap" and the like, and in fact includes many of the same actors tha that you'd expect for what seems like the loosely-scripted genre that included Cheryl Hines ("Curb Your Enthisasm") and Michael McKean (who is in most of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries).

There are lots of familiar faces in this movie. David Cross (Arrested Development), Gabe Kaplan (Welcome Back, Kotter), Chris Parnell (Saturday Night Live), Dennis Farina, Estelle Harris. The actors all do a decent job but there just isn't much material to work with.

I do have one caveat. Poker has become big business in the USA, and it may well be that I am just "out of the loop" in this area and don't understand the subtleties of the game. There are some cameos from real poker players in this movie, and in fact Gabe Kaplan (skin stretched too tight for his years) has been a prominent poker player for years.

The acting is good, the story was not interesting to me, but this may well be worth a view if you're a big fan of any of the actors or the world of Poker.

1/5 Quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen!
  by Lil' Fish in a Big River (United States)
Save your money, not even worth a rental fee. I read the bad reviews and thought how bad can it really be? It has a good cast, it's about poker which I love, and it's in Vegas! Well, it was terrible! It had to have been written on the fly as it appeared no thought was put into it whatsoever. What a waste of a talented cast.