Richie (Bierko) wins a bundle on a fruit machine in Atlantic City during a weekend excursion with his cousin Evan (Weber) and their respective girlfriends Roberta (Peterman) and Joan (Sillas). Since Evan lent Richie two of the three quarters that produced the jackpot, he naturally sees a half share as his due, a claim Richie fails to recognise. Typically, the argument between these urban petty sophisticates - Evan's a brain surgeon, Richie designs trainer soles - is less over the value of the booty than over protocol, and their responses are driven not by greed but by stubborn, petulant attitudinising which leads to Richie contracting a mercy hit on his doting mother (Harris) and Evan being vengefully stalked by a TV soap star (Keeslar). Though the film has its moments, these ideas look better on paper. Its traits and themes will be familiar to fans of TV's Seinfeld, which was co-created by first time writer/director
Larry David
, and the script attempts to replicate both the show's manic cross-plotting of coincidences and incongruities, and its inimitable synthesis of funny peculiar and funny ha-ha.