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Serving Sara (2002)
Released By: Paramount Pictures   Rating: PG-13   In Theaters: N/A
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Studio: Paramount Pictures
Genre: Comedy
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Director: Reginald Hudlin
Language: English
Official Website: http://www.servingsara.com/
Theatrical Release: N/A
Home Video Release: 1/28/2003
Cast: Bruce Campbell, Elizabeth Hurley, Matthew Perry, Cedric the Entertainer, Amy Adams, Vincient Pastore
Published ID: 619072
UPC: 097363399148, 097360566345, 032429059390,
Plot: A process server makes an unusual alliance with a beautiful but devious woman in this comedy. Joe Tyler (Matthew Perry) is a former attorney whose career went bust when he picked up some clients who turned out to be associated with the Mafia. These days, Joe makes his living as a process server, who presents people with legal papers -- papers they would usually prefer not to get. One of Joe's fellow servers, Tony (Vincent Pastore), is trying to weasel him out of his job, and has starting tipping off Joe's targets before he can deliver their papers in order to get Joe in dutch with their boss, Ray (Cedric the Entertainer). Joe, however, is able to persuade Ray to give him another chance with a high-profile client, Gordon (Bruce Campbell), a wealthy Texas cattle baron who has decided to divorce his wife and business partner, Sara (Elizabeth Hurley), in order to marry another woman, Kate (Amy Adams). When Joe presents Sara with the divorce papers, she is shocked by the news, which would cost her her half of the Gordon fortune. After Joe gets carjacked and finds herself on the same bus with Sara, she makes him a deal: If he's willing to take back the papers, say he never presented them, and serve a divorce petition to Gordon first, she'll pay Joe an even million dollars. Serving Sara became the focus of some unexpected controversy during its production -- first when Matthew Perry took a brief leave from the production to enter a rehabilitation clinic to fight an addiction to painkillers, and later when Elizabeth Hurley's former boyfriend, Steve Bing, accused Perry of being the father of Hurley's child (a charge both Hurley and Perry denied, and was proven false by blood tests). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
IDDateTimeTitleReviewHelpfulVotesTotalVotes
Barely Entertaining
Added 9/5/2009

I almost always finish a movie...but I actually had to watch this one over 3 days since I thought it was so horrendous. Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley have absolutely NO chemistry. It makes me feel awkward to watch them together. They seem so forced and uncomfortable. This movie has 1-2 decent chuckles...other than that, I kept asking myself how a promising idea and decent actors could turn out so poorly.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Where Texas meets New York City in romantic comedy?
Added 4/4/2009

Mathew Perry is an unshaven process server in competition with a bear sized fellow with bad breath. His world comes to change when he serves Sara an English woman who is getting divorce papers from from her cheating Texas rancher husband. The dialog isn't convincing and the love story is kind of buffoon bogus. A lot of the jokes seem forced or not funny?
The acting isn't really convincing either.
I thought is pretty much stunk as a movie.

0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Matthew Perry can't play anyone else apart from Chandler and Liz Hurley can't act
Added 7/15/2008

I'm going to keep this review short and sweet. The film's rubbish. If you see this in a shop, EVEN if it's really cheap, walk away. What utter nonsense. It's not even worth watching it's that predictable. Bruce Campbell is absolutely wasted in this movie, which is even more disappointing.

And now I'm stuck with it.

0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
utter cac!
Added 2/13/2006

I shouldnt be wasting my time writing this so I'm gonna keep it short and unsweet.

This movie is ABSOLUTELY AWFUL!!! I bought it from the bargain bin in my local DVD shop for £4.99 (over priced). It should have been in the trash bin which is where it is now.

Acting: Awful
Story: Awful
Direction: Awful (the director, on the interview, makes it sound like he's made some fantastic movie!!! He should never work again with a budget over £500)

Infact, it made me feel sick it was that bad!!! DONT rent or buy it.

3 out of 4 people found this helpful.
Neither Funny Nor Romantic: Worth Mostly For Precious Supports Like Campbell and Cedric the Entertainer
Added 11/27/2005

It is strange but true. For the reasons Heaven only knows, someone at one Japanese distributing company decided to theatrically release `Serving Sara' in Japan on 26th November, 2005, the same day as the fourth `Harry Potter' film. Not a very clever way of doing business, I thought, but anyway I went to see it, not for Elizabeth Hurley or Matthew Perry, but for underrated Bruce Campbell, best known as `Ash' in the Evil Dead trilogy. Well, he was good, and so is Cedric the Entertainer, but the film itself was a dull comedy from the beginning to the end.

The hero of the film is played by Matthew Perry, whose character Joe Tyler as process server is a fairly interesting one. Hired by shifty Ray (Cedric the Entertainer) Joe risks his life delivering process, and his job is a unique choice for a comedy. And let's give him a due credit (even though I didn't like `Friends' very much) for Perry is always amusing to see when doing a character in ridiculous situation like `The Whole Nine Yards.' Yes, the sequel was terrible, I know, but the first one was surprisingly funny.

Now enters Elizabeth Hurley as Sara, on whom Joe serves a process as usual. It says that her philandering husband Gordon (Bruce Campbell) wants a divorce, which quite upsets Sara, who in turn offers a lucrative job to Joe - forget his process, and give HER notice to her husband instead, and get lots of money from her. Whether this is legal or not, I don't know, but as a set-up for a comedy, this is adequate.

But something is wrong with the film. Slow storytelling and lazy gags are part of the reasons, but the most damaging is the lack of chemistry between Hurley and Perry. In one scene, Joe and Sara decide to share a motel room for one night, and the situation should be a chance to establish the romantic feeling between them. Instead, their relations remain the same with no emotional change seen between them. Even when they kiss each other, the scene looks still emotionally cold and detached.

Perhaps the actors, whose lack of efforts to be in character, are to be blamed. Or perhaps the stereotyped descriptions of Texas are to be faulted. But probably, I think, it is director's fault Reginald Hudlin (whose previous film was awful `The Ladies Man') who is content with the generic and silly slapstick gags occasionally shown here and there (like Hurley's pants ripped, Perry drinking bad wine and spitting out, etc.) and none of them is really funny. There is one horrible (and extended) gross-out gag scene, one more addition to the tradition of `Let's-humiliate-cows-and-laugh' sequences, in which one of Perry's hands got stuck in the middle of an embarrassing place of the poor animal.

But after all, these terrible moments could be improved (if not totally) by the presence of professional actors, who know a thing or two about comedy, being committed to the job of making laugh. In `Serving Sara' precious supports such as Bruce Campbell and Cedric the Entertainer show that they know their jobs, not the leading actors, especially Hurley. She is beautiful to be sure, but the film needs the down-to-earth personality, not the dead serious beauty, to make everything work as comedy. She once came closest to that kind of quality in `Austin Powers: International man of Mystery.' So why did she step out of the series, and went on to do more duds like this?

0 out of 2 people found this helpful.
Barely Entertaining
Added 9/5/2009

I almost always finish a movie...but I actually had to watch this one over 3 days since I thought it was so horrendous. Matthew Perry and Elizabeth Hurley have absolutely NO chemistry. It makes me feel awkward to watch them together. They seem so forced and uncomfortable. This movie has 1-2 decent chuckles...other than that, I kept asking myself how a promising idea and decent actors could turn out so poorly.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Where Texas meets New York City in romantic comedy?
Added 4/4/2009

Mathew Perry is an unshaven process server in competition with a bear sized fellow with bad breath. His world comes to change when he serves Sara an English woman who is getting divorce papers from from her cheating Texas rancher husband. The dialog isn't convincing and the love story is kind of buffoon bogus. A lot of the jokes seem forced or not funny?
The acting isn't really convincing either.
I thought is pretty much stunk as a movie.

0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
Matthew Perry can't play anyone else apart from Chandler and Liz Hurley can't act
Added 7/15/2008

I'm going to keep this review short and sweet. The film's rubbish. If you see this in a shop, EVEN if it's really cheap, walk away. What utter nonsense. It's not even worth watching it's that predictable. Bruce Campbell is absolutely wasted in this movie, which is even more disappointing.

And now I'm stuck with it.

0 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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