Hugo Pool

There's a fine line between quirky and gimmicky; at times Hugo Pool can't decide whether to be a cute comedy or a mawkish melodrama. Alyssa Milano is Hugo, the owner-operator of a pool company. She has a staggering 44 pools to service in one day, so she shanghais her gambling-addicted mom (Cathy Moriarty), a drug-whacked director (Robert Downey Jr.), and a new client, who happens to be an ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) sufferer (Patrick Dempsey), to help her. Hugo's under an or-else deadline to fill a mobster's (Richard Lewis) pool, so she dispatches her alcoholic junkie dad (Malcolm McDowell) to fetch Colorado River water in a tank truck and bring it back. He picks up a strange hitchhiker (Sean Penn) and becomes obsessed with his shoes; meanwhile, a romance blooms between Hugo and the new client. Of course, Milano is the only sane one in this melange of weirdoes. McDowell channels both Jimmy Durante and Wallace Beery in a bizarre role, Sean Penn is inexplicable, and a rough-looking Downey Jr. sports an indeterminate accent (imagine if Inspector Clouseau was from, say, Romania). Fans of eccentric comedies and offbeat characters (and Alyssa Milano) may enjoy this, while others may find it a little contrived and tedious. --Jerry Renshaw