"The Crew," like one of its leads, Burt Reynolds, had great potential, but squandered it in silliness and a scattershot approach. Reynolds, along with Richard Dreyfuss, Seymour Cassal and Dan Hedaya play over-the-hill mobsters now retired in Miami Beach, trying to save their retirement hotel from the intrusion of yuppies. The scheme the use to do this is actually quite clever. However, as always, the "devil is in the details". The execution is too violent and sexually gamey for senior citizens (particularly female), too silly and juvenile for teen audiences and too predictable for the rest of us. Certainly, I cannot quibble with the casting or the performances in "The Crew". In addition to the leads, Lainie Kazan is always a welcome attraction, as is Jennifer Tilly (when one can keep his eyes off her boobs or her legs, one realizes Tilly can be a first rate actress). Carrie Anne-Moss seems a bit miscast. She's a bit to hard to engender the kind of warmth necessary in her role. But Miguel Sandoval excels in a thankless, stereotypical role as the drug lord. Although Touchstone Films premiered with a film using frontal nudity ("Splash"), the sex and violence in "The Crew" seems out of place. Let's see, we have simulated oral sex, Men's magazine level near nudity (course, no worse than you see at the beach or a public pool) and violence involving baseball bats, shotguns and near drownings. Have we really been THIS desensitized?
