Jury Duty

Released 1995
Stars Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Brian Doyle-Murray, Abe Vigoda
Directed by John Fortenberry

"Jury Duty" is another entry in the national Dumbing It Down sweepstakes, giving us a character who likes jury duty because, hey, when you're sequestered, the room and board are free. After Jim Carrey in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and "Dumb and Dumber," after Adam Sandler in "Billy Madison," after Chris Farley in "Tommy Boy," here is another character whose appeal rests on rudeness, stupidity and the ability to make loud bathroom noises.

In this business one becomes a connoisseur. I can now see that Carrey is a virtuoso, Farley is at least hard-working, Sandler is hopeless and Pauly Shore bypasses all categories to achieve a kind of transcendent fingernails-on-the-blackboard effect. His appeal must be limited to people whose self-esteem and social skills are so damaged that they find humor, or at least relief, in at last encountering a movie character less successful than themselves.

Summary by Roger Ebert