The Grand (film)

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The Grand
Promotional poster
Directed by	Zak Penn
Produced by	Jeff Bowler
Written by	Zak Penn Matt Bierman
Starring	Julie Claire David Cross Shannon Elizabeth Mike Epps Woody Harrelson
Music by	Stephen Endelman
Cinematography	Anthony Hardwick
Editing by	Abby Schwarzwalder
Distributed by	Anchor Bay Entertainment
Release date(s)	March 21, 2008
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$3 million^[1]
IMDb profile

The Grand is an improv comedy film written and directed by Zak Penn. The film has an ensemble cast including Ray Romano, Woody Harrelson, Chris Parnell, Werner Herzog, Jason Alexander, Michael Karnow and Cheryl Hines.^[1]

The film's style is similar to the films of Christopher Guest (Penn himself states this^[2]), where each actor is given direction concerning their character, and the actors are left to improvise each individual scene. The plot of The Grand was somewhat more open-ended than Guest's work, however. The focus of the film is a poker tournament played at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas between the characters in which real poker matches were played by the actors as the scenes were filmed. The film's script did not specify the winner of the tournament, and the ending of the film was determined by the actual game played on set^[2].

The film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival, and was distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment.^[1]

The film opened in limited release in the United States on March 21, 2008 and will open in wider release on April 4, 2008.^[3]

[edit] Critical reception

The film received mixed to favorable reviews from critics. As of March 21, 2008, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 42% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 36 reviews.^[4] Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 61 out of 100, based on 13 reviews.^[5]