Skip to main content

Chips Happen

High-stakes poker gets spoofed in The Grand

IN A perfect world, director Zak Penn's high-stakes poker mockumentary The Grand would have hit theaters a few years ago, before the Texas hold 'em boom started to go bust. Participation at the 2007 World Series of Poker dropped by 28% from the year before; online poker growth has slowed; and Bravo's Celebrity Poker Showdown has been off the air for two years. The Grand is so 2006—which might not be great for its box office but isn't necessarily a bad thing for the audience.

Penn's film is ostensibly about a loser named Jack Faro (played by Woody Harrelson) and the $10 million hold 'em event that could get him out of enormous debt. But the plot is secondary; The Grand is sharpest when it's probing—and affectionately puncturing—the self-important archetypes of the poker subculture. There's the statistics-spewing savant, played by Saturday Night Live alum Chris Parnell, and the high-strung, tantrum-prone rounder, played by David Cross. Dennis Farina is also amusing as hardass card shark Deuce Fairbanks, who sneers that Las Vegas's downfall came "the day they let people wear culottes into the casinos."

Penn says that much of the film, including the 35-minute final-table scene, was unscripted, and the improv results are mixed. (In one all-too-easy joke, Farina riffs on the silly names poker players concoct for hands: a "San Francisco bus boy" is queens and treys.) Even in its wittiest moments, The Grand requires a familiarity with real, televised poker and its cast of characters. Cross's hothead seems to be based on his own snarky appearances on CPS, and it helps to know that his character, the brother of a female poker star, is a send-up of Howard Lederer and his sister Annie Duke. For a poker outsider, it can be a lot to decipher, like reading a 3--5 off-suit against a rainbow 10-9-2-4 before the river. But for those in the know, watching The Grand will be like living 2006 all over again.

The Pop Culture Grid

How do sports stars fit in?

Eliot Spitzer is ...

My choice for VP would be

At Starbucks I always order ...

I really lose my cool when ...

Billy Packer or Dick Vitale

JOSH ANDERSON Braves CF

The guy (above) caught with a prostitute

Mike Huckabee

Black coffee

I'm stuck in traffic

Billy Packer

KYLE KORVER Jazz F

Not going to be president anytime soon

Anyone but Hillary Clinton

Green tea

I'm stuck in traffic

Dick Vitale (below)

BRAD ELDRED White Sox 1B

In trouble

Florida governor Charlie Crist

Caramel macchiato

I rarely ever lose my cool

Dick Vitale

JANNERO PARGO Hornets G

Human

Charles Barkley (left)

Lemon pound cake

People try to cheat

Dick Vitale

PHOTO

COURTESY OF ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT (POSTER)

PHOTO

COURTESY OF ANCHOR BAY ENTERTAINMENT (MOVIE SCENE)

SHADES OF GLORY Comedian Cross and the rest of the cast improvised most of the oh-so-2006 mockumentary.

PHOTO

SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS (SPITZER)

PHOTO

GERRY BROOME/AP (VITALE)

PHOTO

MAURY PHILLIPS/WIREIMAGE.COM (BARKLEY)

PHOTO

GREG NELSON (PARGO)

PHOTO

M. SPENCER GREEN/AP (ELDRED)

PHOTO

DOUGLAS C. PIZAC/AP (KORVER)

PHOTO

TODD KIRKLAND/ICON SMI (ANDERSON)

PHOTO

D. JIMENEZ (ILLUSTRATION)

PHOTO