Mooseport is mostly for the mature

To begin with, Welcome to Mooseport is not a movie aimed at college students. Your mom will love this movie. That isn't to say that as a college students we can't appreciate the trials and tribulations of the lives of those a few years older, but in this movie, we're not meant to appreciate them. There are no life lessons, no morals to the story, and no great works of art in Mooseport. It doesn't appeal to us in precisely the same way that Super Troopers doesn't appeal to our parents.

That said, Welcome to Mooseport is a good movie. Both sweet and sarcastic, its storyline, while completely outrageous, is fun and surprising.

Gene Hackman stars as the fictional ex-President Monroe Cole who has moved after he left office from Baltimore to Mooseport, Maine after losing his home in a divorce settlement. When he decides to run for mayor and asks out the local hardware store owner Handy Harrison's long-time girlfriend in the same day, Handy (played by a surprisingly tolerable Ray Romano) decides to beat the ex-prez at his own game and throws his hat into the ring for the mayoral race. What ensues is ridiculous battle of wills between two stubborn blowhards who we laugh at and not with. Hackman and Romano give fabulous performances in the very well-written main storyline of the film.

Where the film is lacking is the supporting story of the love lives of the two men. If Welcome to Mooseport had been left as the story of a mayoral race, it would have been amazing. Their daunting quest for the love of a woman who thinks they are really both rather stupid anyway, however, is simply not captivating. Maura Tierney plays the men's overly angry and not particularly convincing love interest, Sally, who shows up at inopportune moments, makes snide yet overly sentimental comments, and detracts from the main struggle between the two men.

She has a kindred spirit in Cole's sappy aid, Grace, a mopey woman who has devoted her life to the President. Unlike Sally, Grace, played by Marcia Gay Harden, has her moments. She and Bullard (Fred Savage), the President's other top aid, play off of one another for satirical moments of self-importance. By combining their powers, they make the President's home a hysterical study in self-aggrandizement, from the dull-witted secret service lackeys who offer to off local politicians to the overly serious campaign manager who tries to orchestrate a smear campaign in the tiny town's mayoral race.

Cole and Harrison are surrounded by a troupe of wildly outrageous characters that each fit into their own, archetypal sitcom role. They're typical in the way that a Hollywood screenwriter would imagine a typical small-town Maine constituency. There are the devoted, sarcastic hardware store employees, the elderly board of selectmen who are so hard of hearing their yelling serves as a running gag, the overly made-up town beauty who has all of three lines, and the orphaned moose adopted by Handy and left to graze on the town's main street. The supporting cast is funny and serves their purpose well.

To Mooseport'scredit, it excels at breaking well-known actors out oftheir molds. Hackman is not the serious actor full of angst and despair as we have often seen him. He is the arrogant straightman to Romano's bumbling but good-hearted hometown hero. Even Romano, who has made his mark as the dopey, irritating star of the ever-so-originally-titled sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," is not what fans of the actor expect. Though his doofy voice and clumsy demeanor are inescapable and will encapsulate any character he plays, he is exponentially less irritating as this good-natured, wimpy, na*ve local boy than his sitcom character is.