If Alfred Hitchcock could remake Fargo
, it might feel something like Carkeet's comic-absurd latest (after his memoir, Campus Sexpot
). Denny Braintree, a writer for model train enthusiast mag The Fearless Modeler
, is sidetracked when he wrecks his car while traveling home from an assignment in Vermont. Taken to a Montpelier hotel to spend the night before flying home to Chicago, he meets a drunken woman named Marge who promptly strips and slips into his Jacuzzi. After a quick condom run, Denny returns to find Marge missing. The next morning, two policemen show up at the airport looking for Denny, but they mistake him for a local named Homer Dumpling, who vanished from town three years ago. Denny, now the prime suspect in Marge's disappearance, returns to town as Homer and has a dodgy time fitting into his new role, but when Marge's body turns up and Homer becomes a suspect, Denny's new identity is no safer than his own. It's nutty and pushes the bounds of credulity, but the make or break is Denny: narcissistic, crude and in over his head, he's either charming or terminally annoying. (Mar.)
