E! Entertainment Television (Sun., Dec. 17, 9 p.m. ET)
It's set on the Riviera and it stars a guy named French, so credit this comedy-mystery with a strong sense of place. But the laughs are widely spaced and the pace is awfully slow.
French Stewart of 3rd Rock from the Sun plays Nathan Booth, a struggling actor with a small part in a Cannes Film Festival entry called Hemingway Loved Me. Nathan arrives at the fest to find that his one scene has been snipped by the portly and pushy producers (Michael Lerner and Jay Brazeau), a brother team that vaguely resembles the Weinsteins of Miramax. At the opening ceremonies, he warms a seat next to Hemingway's female star (Bo Derek) and suddenly the glamor queen croaks. Soon—actually not soon enough—the film's male lead also turns up dead, followed by the director and the screenwriter. The police inspector (Karina Lombard) regards Nathan as a murder suspect—though she has sex with him—but her subordinate (Brian George) reveres him as the star of a short-lived American cop show that has achieved inexplicable success on French TV. Nathan's detective image is a decent comic idea, but the movie world in-jokes are rather flat. A late cameo by executive producer Merv Griffin will have you crying, "Cut!"
Bottom Line: No Golden Palm winner
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