Poker In the Media: The Grand
by Bodog Poker | Sep 14 2010
The 2008 comedy The Grand is a bit of a treat for poker players, even if the end product is not quite as good as the individual ingredients would make it seem.
An improv comedy in the vein of Christopher Guest's Best In Show and Waiting For Guffman, the movie centers around a massive poker tournament going down at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. What makes this even more improvisational than many mockumentaries that are out there is the fact that nobody knew who was going to win any of the games and the movie's progression was based entirely on who actually had the better hand. In certain scenes. This open-ended approach earned it a lot of praise by poker fans and comedy nerds alike.
The cast is terrific: Woody Harrelson plays the sentimental favorite, One Eyed Jack Faro; Curb Your Enthusiasm's Cheryl Hines plays an Annie Duke-styled player named Lainie Schwartzman that finds herself pitted against her brother Larry Schwartzman, played by David Cross. Richard Kind is Andy Andrews, an unknown player that may or may not take it all. There's also Dennis Farina, Barry Corbin, Michael McKean, Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Ray Romano and, shockingly, German auteur Werner Herzog among other established actors and actresses.
Of course, you can't set a documentary-style film in the world of poker without getting in some real players and Phil Gordon, Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Laak, Antonio Esfandiari and Phil Hellmuth all make appearances as themselves while Shannon Elizabeth and Gabe Kaplan go back to their Hollywood roots and portray additional players in the tournament.
As stated at the beginning, for people who love poker and comedy, this movie offers up a stellar cast that frequently have some great moments. The opening scene in which Jack Faro (Woody Harrelson,) a serial husband who has been married 75 times prior to the film's start hits on a bartender that he'd already been wed to just a few years ago. He's also deeply damaged, a recovering addict that has had so many stints in rehab that he's just decided to move in.
Despite these deficiencies, he's a genuinely appealing character who's entering The Grand poker tournament to win the $10,000,000 pot to cover a loan he'd gotten on his own casino. The Grand tournament was founded by Jack's grandfather and this conflict of interest is one of the major plot points for the film.
The rest of the players all won their spots in the event through online poker tournaments and the array of personalities on display should be familiar to everyone that's ever watched any coverage of the World Series of Poker, much less someone who's actually sat down at a tournament table and had to deal with the sea of humanity that comes to love different aspects of the game.
Overall, the movie kind of falls apart after a strong first act: the improvisational nature of the plot leads to some unsatisfying moments near the end and not even Werner Herzog's character sacrificing small animals and cheating can save the shambling mess the film becomes in its final moments.
Apparently, audiences felt the same: even with its modest budget of only $3,000,000 (or over $5,000,000 less than what the winner of this year's WSOP Main Event will take away,) The Grand managed to lose money in the box office and on home video.
