A Glorious Failure Spoilers herein. I really appreciate artists willing to push the envelope. They're not pushing if they don'tfail at least a third of the time. This is a failure, but an interesting, glorious one and in itsway is more interesting to watch than, say, `O Brother.' You know something worthknowing is up when the most nuanced actor in a high level project like this is a painting. These guys are cinefiles, enthusiasts who examine what they and others do withmeticulous detail and grand vision. They reach for a specific tone, different for eachproject, and then engineer the pieces to support. What do you think? Was the original vision too ambitious: a takeoff from the Shakespearean actor from Huck Finn? In this case, it is a Coen-like folding: an actorplaying an actor playing Twain who writes the riverboat plot using a previously writtenskeleton (something recently done by PS Hoffman in `Cold Mountain'). Or is it that the vision was as apt an reachable as any they have had, but they erred in theengineering? I think it is this latter. Some of the blame is theirs: they have come to behypnotized by the power of themed music in their films. Here it is a distraction, sapsresources and fails to support the quirky vision. Tbone failed them. But they were stuck with some bad casting. Once that happens, you're lost. Hanks is sucha heaviweight that he forces the vision to bend to what he wants to do as an actor. Bigmistake. The old lady Marva Munson is capable of playing only one sort of character. We've seenher do it in several dreary projects. She just couldn't ever get the joke and really believesshe is in an Eddie Murphy movie. And third, and almost incidentally, we have Wayans. He also knows only one way ofswinging. None of these three was capable of getting on board the twisted vision the brothers had.Dozens of real actors have. But these three are, alas, characters now, not actors. Still, you can see what they had in mind, and still be amused by it even though it neverappears on the screen Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.