Okay, here's the deal. Attention Hollywood Cats! I've got two innocent questions, and somebody on the Left Coast owes me an explanation. I know you're real busy out there, figuring out how many POGS to make for the Hercules blitz, wearing turtleneck suits and shiny slacks, kickin' it with the refs at the NBA playoffs and all that. I don't want to bother you, really, but I've just got to ask these two things and I'll be on my way. One - just how freakin' stupid do you think we are? And, two - just exactly who in the globe is telling Joe Pesci to make these g'dawful movies?

Friends and neighbors, the new Joe Pesci film Gone Fishin' is absolutely the stankiest piece of dung to fall off the compost heap since that hideous trainwreck 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag. I know that wasn't too many moons ago, but wait a second, 8 Heads In A Duffel Bag also starred one Joe Pesci. Oscar®-winner Joe Pesci, who was brilliant in Goodfellas and Casino, who was very funny in My Cousin Vinny, who amazed us all in Raging Bull, and who should have the necessary motor skills to turn the pages of a script. (Whether he knows how to read them is now in question.) To make things sadder, this time he decided to drag Danny Glover down with him into the quagmire that is Gone Fishin'. It would to be a simple thing to tell you, gentle readers, that this movie sucks. It would also be simple for me to tell you that Grand Canyon is a big hole in Arizona.

This 94-minute trip into Dante's Inferno has Pesci and Glover heading to the Florida Everglades for a free fishing vacation. Trouble is, these lifelong chums just can't do anything quite right. Oh, how the jocularities skyrocket from there. They lose their boat, and their car, and their beer, and, would you believe it, they're also being tailed by a dangerous criminal they managed to tick off. Oh, you naughty, naughty plot twists.

Let's see. Imagine yourself to be a movie scientist working up a formula for this thing. It goes a bit like this: Warm up your bunsen burners and fill a beaker with Home Alone. Burn off Macauley Culkin entirely (oh, to be so lucky.) Distill out a bit of Daniel Stern, add in a test tube of Danny Glover. Now process the mixture to extract any remnants of humor, add three drops from any random cable-access fishing show, pour in some uncut caffeine and a dropper of femininity (Lynn Whitfield and Roseanna Arquette). Allow the concoction to stagnate for over a year. Withold it from the critics and pour it into moviehouses at a time when every respectable new release is in hiding from The Lost World.

I guess the biggest question of all is "Why, Joe, why?" Paisan. Take a tip. Your agent? Fired. Axed. Ousted. Booted. And, if this decision was yours, you would have had more success dropkicking a brick across a football field than you would have ever had with this mess of a film.

Danny? Places in the Heart, Mandela, the Lethal Weapons. I mean, c'mon. Your history is starting to wear a bit thin. Angels in the Outfield? Operation Dumbo Drop? And now Gone Fishin'? You better hope that people forget this self-inflicted planter's wart, and forget it quick.

Christopher Cain, you wacky director guy, you. I beg you drop by your local video store and take home Goodfellas and The Color Purple. Watch them both carefully and realize the talent you just pissed away. Better yet, go sit in a theater and watch your own movie. The only Snickers you're gonna hear are the chocolate ones being munched on by bored patrons. In short, this is the most unfunny comedy to show up in quite some time. I think I'd start kissin' some major studio hiney, since a walk down Resume Lane (The Principal, The Amazing Panda Adventure, The Next Karate Kid) ain't exactly steering you toward Cannes either.

Dear reader, if your objective in watching a movie is to see things get torn up, then you might dig Gone Fishin'. If you're a sadistic type who likes to see film careers on the slide, then you've got yourself a classic. And if you're a Hollywood player who put this funk in motion -- I'm still waiting for some answers.