‘Serving Sara’ Does No Service to Anyone, Viewers Least of All

The crushingly unfunny new comedy “Serving Sara” raises the question: Can you kill something that’s already dead? One of the more cynical and insulting Hollywood offerings in recent memory, the film was nominally directed by Reginald Hudlin (best known for “House Party”) and ostensibly written by Jay Scherick and David Ronn, who show either guts or foolishness in keeping their names on this odoriferous mess.

In brief, the story involves a sneery process server named Joe (Matthew Perry) and the beautiful woman (Elizabeth Hurley as Sara) to whom he’s trying to serve divorce papers. Married to a philandering rich Texan (Bruce Campbell), the avenging wife strikes a deal: If Joe serves the husband first (a move that will increase the amount of her divorce settlement), Sara will pay him a million-dollar commission.

As expected, the plan comes equipped with various obstacles, including Sara’s husband and his assorted henchmen, as well as Joe’s aggressively stupid rival (Vincent Pastore) and belligerently short-tempered boss (Cedric the Entertainer). The even bigger obstacles, however, are the excruciating script and the transparent fact that both the director and his two leads would rather be anywhere but here.

In an apparent bid to raise the gross-out stakes, Scherick and Ronn pad the bare-bones plot with a surfeit of toilet humor, embellishing the stink with a number of moronic ethnic jokes (“Wop-Along Cassidy”) and an interminable scene in which Joe tickles a bull’s prostate. The sight of the actor sticking his arm up the animal’s backside is certainly distasteful, but worse yet, it’s not even funny.

As with far too many of their peers, the writers have taken their gonzo cues from the Farrellys without grasping that what elevates the brothers above the comic crowd isn’t just a genius for the grotesque but love for their characters.

Of course it helps if there are actual characters in the first place, as opposed to ciphers like these.

Smiling through the wreckage, Hurley recites her lines with unmodulated cheeriness, feigning obliviousness to a camera that alternately hovers next to her miniskirt like an overheated dog and narrows its sights on the words “Trailer Trash” emblazoned across her T-shirted chest. Meanwhile, Perry, an agreeable small-screen presence seeking a large-screen future, barely registers. It’s been widely reported that the “Friends” star suffered health problems during production (causing him to exit the set for several months), and although that may explain the listlessness of his performance, it can’t account for the shoddiness of his material. It’s no wonder the actor throws away his lines like a guy tossing out the trash.

Hudlin isn’t the worst director to work in Hollywood (“House Party” at least had oomph), but it’s clear that somewhere along the line on this one, he threw in the towel. His setups have all the animation of a dusty museum diorama, and he doesn’t exhibit an iota of affection for his two leads, neither of whom is photographed to advantage. It’s instructive that Perry is repeatedly shot from low angles that treble the size of his chin, bringing to mind the cruel glee with which John Huston framed Sydney Greenstreet’s considerable mass in “The Maltese Falcon.”

The director’s antipathy for the project would be palpable even if he didn’t also give himself an uncredited cameo in which he seems to trash his own movie. When Sara loses her suitcase at an airport, she tears open dozens of other suitcases to cobble together a new outfit, leaving a mountain of disgorged clothes in her wake. The baggage handler who stumbles in on the damage is Hudlin, who, after taking one look, says, “I ain’t cleaning it up.” Obviously, he’s made good on his promise.

MPAA guidelines: PG-13, for crude humor, sexual content and language. Times guidelines: Every other line seems to be a scatological joke or an ethnic slur.

‘Serving Sara’

Matthew Perry...Joe

Elizabeth Hurley...Sara

Vincent Pastore...Tony

Bruce Campbell...Gordon

Cedric the Entertainer...Ray

An Illusion/Halsted Pictures Production, released by Paramount Pictures and Mandalay Pictures. Director Reginald Hudlin. Screenwriters Jay Scherick & David Ronn. Producer Dan Halsted. Cinematographer Robert Brinkmann. Editor Jim Miller. Costumes Francine Jamison-Tanchuck. Music Marcus Miller. Production designer Rusty Smith. Running Time: 1 hour, 40 minutes.

In general release.