Diamonds (Ws)

In an effort to bond with his son, Lance (Dan Aykroyd) agrees to help his father, Harry (Kirk Douglas), a former boxer now hampered by a stroke (as Douglas is in real life), hunt down some diamonds he was given by a crooked boxing promoter but had to hide for reasons that don't exactly make sense. The three generations drive to Reno in a convertible (driving with the top down in winter, for some reason), where they win at gambling and decide to blow the money at a nearby whorehouse, where Lauren Bacall is the madam and Jenny McCarthy is one of the "girls." Lessons are learned, honor is regained. Every clichéd scene of Diamonds is written and played in such broad strokes (er, so to speak) that it's impossible to really connect with the characters; they don't have enough substance that you can grasp them as people. It's particularly difficult to watch Kirk Douglas--an actor who's spent his life playing thorny, galvanizing characters--being mined for cheap, easy sentiment. Get one of his older movies instead; get Paths of Glory or Out of the Past or Gunfight at the O.K. Corral or Spartacus or even 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, any one of which is a thousand times the movie Diamonds is. --Bret Fetzer