POT CAPER BLURRED

HOMEGROWN: Caper movie. Starring Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria and Kelly
Lynch. Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal. (R. 95 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)

``Homegrown'' is a little caper movie about a trio of marijuana growers from
Northern California who are forced to free-lance when their boss is gunned
down. They pick the crop, process it, bag it and sell it to big-time
wholesalers. Along the way, they get stoned and they get shot at. They keep
busy.

Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, the picture is a strictly low-budget affair.
The cost-cutting is most obvious in Trevor Rabin's score, which peppers
virtually every moment of screen time with drum machines, rock songs and
crashing chords, creating the sense that the actors are there solely to
reinforce a point that the music is making.

Billy Bob Thornton, Hank Azaria and Ryan Phillippe play the hapless trio,
and Kelly Lynch is the love interest. The movie's aim is that we should see
the three buddies as lovable bumblers, but they come across as seedy. Still,
the plot, which brings in local growers, thieving competitors and the Mafia,
is brisk enough to hold interest in a superficial way.

The director's background in more A-list features (``Losing Isaiah,'' ``A
Dangerous Woman'') shows in the number of famous faces in cameo roles: Jamie
Lee Curtis, Judge Reinhold, John Lithgow and, best of all, Ted Danson as an
affablebut psychotic mobster.

©1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett