MOVIE REVIEW : Pauly Shore Serves Time on ‘Jury Duty’ Just for Laughs

“Jury Duty” would be a terrible comedy at any time, but its lame references to the O.J. Simpson trial and puny jabs at the media circus surrounding such events only make it seem worse.

Pauly Shore plays Tommy, an inept, none-too-ambitious guy, who having failed as a male stripper, winds up as the jury foreman on a serial murder case. It seems an open-and-shut matter, but Tommy, having promoted himself to the presidential suite in the hotel where the jury is sequestered and being otherwise unemployed, starts stretching out deliberations, understandably driving his fellow jurors, including the beautiful Tia Carrere, nuts. Shamelessly, the film’s director John Fortenberry, in a less-than-encouraging feature debut, and its various writers then have Tommy and Tia’s Monica start having real doubts about the accused killer’s guilt.

Shelley Winters, as Shore’s doting trailer park mother, and Charles Napier, as her salvage collector fiance, liven up this increasingly grim business.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for crude sex-related humor. Times guidelines: A dubious film for children, not so much for coarse jokes, but for the impression they could get of the jury system.

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‘Jury Duty’ Pauly Shore: Tommy Tia Carrere: Monica Shelley Winters: Mrs. Collins Charles Napier: Jed A TriStar Pictures and Triumph Films presentation in association with Weasel Productions Inc. Director John Fortenberry. Producers Yorma Ben-Ami, Peter M. Lenkov. Screenplay by Neil Tolkin and Barbara Williams & Samantha Adams; from a story by Williams and Adams. Cinematographer Avi Karpick. Editor Steven Semel. Costumes Terry Dresbach. Music David Kitay. Production designers Deborah Raymond & Dorian Vernaccio. Set designer Daniel Bradford. Set decorator Nancy S. Fallace. Running time: 1 hour, 27 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.