Themes: Switching Sides, Crumbling Marriages, Nothing Goes Right
Main Cast: Matthew Perry, Elizabeth Hurley, Bruce Campbell, Amy Adams, Vincent Pastore
Release Year: 2002
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
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
Drew Boughton - Art Director, J. Grey Smith - Art Director, David C. Scheer - Associate Producer, Heidi Levitt - Casting, Monika Mikkelsen - Casting, Francine Jamison-Tanchuck - Costume Designer, Donald Sparks - First Assistant Director, Reginald Hudlin - Director, Jim Miller - Editor, Dan Kolsrud - Executive Producer, Marcus Miller - Composer (Music Score), Byron Phillips - Musical Direction/Supervision, Matt Walden - Musical Direction/Supervision, Rusty Smith - Production Designer, Robert Brinkmann - Cinematographer, Dan Halsted - Producer, Carla Curry - Set Designer, Richard E. Perry - Special Effects, Stacy Brownrigg - Sound/Sound Designer, Carol Leifer - Screenwriter, Jay Scherick - Screenwriter, David Ronn - Screenwriter, Rob Bottin - Animatronic Effects, Greg Hedgepath - Supervising Sound Editor
The movie opens with Joe, a week late, serving a Mafia kingpin known as Fat Charlie with a summons to appear as a witness in court, and his abrasive boss Ray (Cedric the Entertainer) ridiculing him for such while complimenting his rival server Tony (Vincent Pastore) for serving multiple targets in record time. Willing to give him one last shot, Ray gives Joe the assignment to serve British socialite Sara Moore with divorce papers from her husband Gordon (Bruce Campbell), who is at his ranch in Texas with a mistress (played by Amy Adams) while Sara vacations in upstate New York.
While attempting to serve her, Sara is tipped off by Tony, thus revealing that the reason Joe has been failing is because Tony has been sabotaging his efforts. Eventually Joe does serve her, but is mugged by Fat Charlie's goons (who have been trailing him), leading to them taking his car. The two are forced to take the same bus, they enter a conversation where Joe tells her that, because her husband had the papers filled out due to Texas law, she stands to gain nothing from the divorce. After finding out that the typical "half of everything" law would apply if the papers had been served under New York law, Sara offers Joe a million dollars to serve her husband and rip up her papers. Although he'll lose his job, Joe agrees and the two set off to serve Gordon.
When Ray hears of this, he tells Gordon and sends Tony off to re-serve Sara. Gordon in turn hires a bodyguard (Terry Crews) to protect himself, and Joe, expecting Tony to tail him, leaves a set of bogus clues that lead him to Miami, Florida; Bangor, Maine; and then Amarillo, Texas; where he's shot in the back as he attempts to get on the grounds of the wrong ranch to try and serve the papers. Sara and Joe trail Gordon to his ranch, but Gordon evades them. Eventually they stay at a hotel where Gordon's mistress makes a new deal to Joe for one million dollars ($1,000,000) of the divorce settlement in return for Gordon's location. Joe agrees, but the entire deal is a set-up to get Tony into their apartment to serve Sara. Furious, Sara kicks Joe out.
While Joe contemplates his lost fortune and budding love for Sara, he sees Tony's watch in the picture he took of him serving Sara, and calls Ray to inform him that Tony forgot to set his watch to the correct time zone, and thus the papers do not take effect until 7:04. With mere minutes until they both lose a fortune, Joe and Sara trail Gordon to a rodeo, where they evade Gordon's bodyguard and Tony in a motorbike competition. With seconds to spare before 7:04, Gordon is knocked out by a pack of beer dropped on his head by Sara, and Joe serves him under New York law which Gordon, finally accepting the loss, takes the serve as he's being photographed. The film ends with Joe and Sara at Joe's dream vineyard, where they taste-test (and spit out) Joe's first bottle before going inside to have sex.
In early 1996 Ivan Reitman was planning to produce, but not direct, a movie on Sara's began he wrote a script for the movie, called "Road to Texas" In August 1997 director Ron Howard and Reginald Hudlin was signed with Universal Pictures to direct the biopic with actor Jim Carrey in the lead role By May 1998 Howard and Hudlin parted ways with the studio, citing creative differences. Other actors considered for Joe Tyler at time were John GoodmanTim Allen and Dennis Quaid In June 2000, the director sought to direct the biopic based on a script by Frank Oz while at the same time, director Francis Ford Coppola was developing Flipping the Mark which had been in development hell. Filming began in December 2000 from New York to Dallas in early working title Servicing Sara in June 23, 2001.
Reception
Critics
As of August 2007, the film had score of 18 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 26 reviews, indicating "extreme dislike or disgust."[1] On Rotten Tomatoes, 5% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 103 reviews (5 "fresh", 98 "rotten").[2]
Box office
The film opened at #6 at the U.S. box office and earned $5.7 million in its opening weekend. The film had a budget of $29 million and the film's total gross in the United States was $16.9 million.[3]
