Flaky 'Trial': Kramer on Retainer

Michael Richards's hair may be flat and his slapstick holstered, but the "Seinfeld" regular isn't fooling anybody. He's still Cosmo Kramer -- a bizarro version perhaps -- but a hipster doofus just the same in "Trial and Error," a pleasant comedy about courtrooms, courtships and such.

Jonathan Lynn, who also directed the funnier, edgier "My Cousin Vinny," returns to familiar territory with this tale of an impostor's effect on the stuffy environs of jurisprudence. Think of it as My Cousin Cosmo.

While Richards has top billing, trusty Jeff Daniels is the story's true romantic lead as Charles Tuttle, a rising star in the L.A. legal arena who is about to marry the boss's daughter, Tiffany (Alexandra Wentworth). The wedding is only a week away when the boss sends Charles to a dusty Nevada backwater, Paradise Bluff, to handle a family legal matter.

Richard Rietti (Richards), his flaky best man and boyhood friend, decides to relocate the bachelor bash he had planned and arrives in Paradise Bluff ready to party. The subsequent celebration leaves Charles temporarily in a vegetative state, so Richard, an out-of-work actor, decides to take his place in court. He expects to ask for a continuance and be on his way.

But the judge (consummate gavel-banger Austin Pendleton) and the dour district attorney (Jessica Steen) refuse to postpone the case yet again. When the real Charles comes to his senses, his pal is attempting to question a potential juror. Now the two men are obliged to trade places and in so doing come to see the truth about their client's guilt, the business of lawyering and their own unexamined lives.

These heady ideas will come as revelations only to those who are unfamiliar with the conventions of modern romantic comedies: Charles, for example, learns that he'd be better off married to Billie, a really poor but nice waitress (model Charlize Theron), than his overly pampered, poodle-faced fiancee, Tiffany. Of course, in real life, this would send his career into the toilet.

Billie, a gun owner and trailer park resident, introduces Charles to her quaint habit of blowing up crappers that have been dropped at the local dump. She does it when she needs a release, poor dear. When we think back to Daniels's prolonged throne scene in "Dumb and Dumber," perhaps we should count ourselves lucky that his release in this movie is only an emotional one.

Trial and Error is rated PG-13 for brief sexual content.