Okay, here's the deal. I've spent the better part of my life learning how to avoid things that make me uncomfortable. I manage to be "on call" whenever I get a wedding or graduation invitation. Our little hamlet always seems to develop a convenient "epidemic" in the days prior to most medical conventions. And I'm pretty good at ducking phone calls from my nosey Aunt Gertie, who tries to use me as the conduit for family gossip.

It's a given, though, that there are certain occasions that you just cannot avoid. I still have to spend Christmas with my parents. One year they gave me the option of not coming, and I was brazen enough to take them up on their offer and planned a cross-country drive to Las Vegas, to see Wayne Newton and sow some holiday dice. As I was packing my car, Momma gave me my presents so I'd "know that somebody loved me on Christmas Day." I got as far as Birmingham before the guilt overtook me and I u-turned toward home.

As a result, I felt it was my duty to see Grosse Pointe Blank the other night. I wanted to see somebody else go through the same hell I did at my tenth reunion. And, in seeing this flick, I found out that reunions aren't bad at all, if you have a good screenwriter to go with you. In this film, Martin Q. Blank, played by the ever-groovy John Cusack, is going home for the first time since high school graduation. He's worried about what all those people will think about him, since he kind of vanished on prom night and was never seen again. He's scared to death about seeing his sweetheart, whom he stood up at the dance.

But his alumni chairman tracked him down, and made sure he got invited. Yet contrary to the invite, Martin's not in the NFL, nor a cheese shop owner. His occupation is, well, a bit more complicated. He worked for the government for a while, but now, he's "self-employed." More specifically, he's a hit man.

People, I kid you not. This film is one of the most inventive and quirkiest things to come out of Hollywood in a month of holidays. It has that Pulp Fiction feel, without feeling like a Pulp Fiction ripoff. Cusack's blue-collar manner and everyman exasperation is perfect for a bus driver or a shoe salesman, but to hear him discussing murdering people for a living is incredibly funny. This guy is just going home again, to his high school reunion. And he just happens to be a professional assassin. It's a hoot, folks.

It's not surprising to find that the film's director is George Armitage, also known for a little quirk in his work. Anyone that remembers Miami Blues will recall those little touches that made you tilt your head like a collie hearing microphone feedback. Fred Ward's false teeth. The dead Hare Krishna. The vinegar and raisin pie. Well, Grosse Pointe Blank has all of those things and more. The movie's failing point may just be that "more."

There are just too many things to follow in this movie. You get about ten plot paths, when four or five would have done just as well. The most significant of these unneeded paths is named Dan Aykroyd. I'm almost to a point where I want to drive a stake through Dan's heart, just so he'll quit coming back from the dead. It's like Aykroyd told the director that he could out-quirk him in this movie and set out to do so. It drags this otherwise great movie down to a level of plodding that it doesn't deserve.

On the plus side, though, you get the hippest script around. You get a ballsy attitude that I wish more films had today. It damns the marketing-demographics rule and just throws this film out there. If you like it, fine; if you don't, fine. The soundtrack is a retro blast, featuring some of the most listenable music of the 1980s. The pacing is quick, the action is sharp, but the performances are where it's at.

You get Minnie Driver, slimmed down from her wonderful plump-chick turn in Circle of Friends, playing "the straight man" to Cusack, one of the most talented actors never to be nominated for an Oscar. Their chemistry together is one that could be compared to Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn in Robin and Marian (if you ain't seen it, run -- do not walk -- to your video store and rent it. It's great.) Cusack and Driver bounce lines off one another like old pals, and their timing together is perfection.

I'm very fond of Grosse Pointe Blank, and I wish it were the norm coming out of Hollywood right now instead of the exception. It's a little too crowded, but it still works. And it proves a point that we probably all knew for a long time: You can go home again, but it's a lot easier if you take a gun.