What’s a girl to do? Randy (Matt Dillon) tries to handle a precious Jewel (Liv Tyler) in One Night at McCool’s.

Director Harald Zwart arrives at feature filmmaking from the world of commercials, but his big-screen debut would seem to arrive directly from graduate school. One Night at McCool’s has all the energy and fresh imagination of someone brave enough to risk falling on his face. The picture also has a hint of undisciplined immaturity, a first-draft bravado and a screw-it, let’s-go-have-a-beer quality that registers strongly when one thinks back about the flick. But most important, One Night at McCool’s cooks. It’s not tidy, but it’s tasty, and inventive from beginning to end.

  The narrative here concerns one woman and five men: a bartender, a lawyer, a crook, a cop and a hitman. We meet Burmeister (Michael Douglas) the hitman first, concertedly involved, as hitmen so often are, playing bingo. Burmeister is approached by Randy (Matt Dillon) the bartender with a paper sack full of cash. Randy wants the woman in question whacked. Why? the laconic hitman wonders, barely looking up from his stamper, careful not to miss a number.

  And so Randy begins his tale of woe. Seems Randy is just closing up one night, dumping a sack of empties into the garbage when he has no choice but to rescue said woman, Jewel (Liv Tyler), from a maniac perhaps willing to run her down in his hot rod. Jewel avers she wouldn’t mind a drink and maybe an invitation to listen to music. And pretty soon Randy and Jewel have become close in a distinctly Biblical way. Enter the crook, Utah (Andrew "Dice Clay" Silverstein). You been squeaking the bed springs with my girl, he accuses; I’ll have to relieve your bar safe of all its money. Randy, of course, is a fish, Jewel the bait. But wait, Jewel actually likes Randy. So she shoots Utah. And we fall into the mouth of a whole other narrator.

  Randy’s cheating lawyer cousin, Carl (Paul Reiser), is in the bar that night, and he wants to confess to his shrink (the unshrinkable Reba McEntire) that he has the hots for Randy’s girl. Yada yada yada. Carl’s an egotistical jerk. So pretty soon we get narrator number three, police detective Charlie Dehling (John Goodman). He shows up to investigate the demise of Utah and promptly mistakes Jewel for a steamy combination of the Virgin Mary and his dead wife, Theresa. Obviously, Jewel is too good for Randy; therefore, Randy is a murderer and ought to be executed.

  The Rashomon strategy of the outset delivers some grins of recognition. Each narrator is the hero of his own tale, and the other characters are either villains or bit players of little importance. After a while, though, Zwart clearly exhausts whatever potential he originally foresaw in this multiple-viewpoints approach and simply jettisons it, a sloppy tactic that nonetheless fails to diminish the picture’s momentum. What gradually begins to emerge is that Jewel is a real schemer and only Randy sees her true nature. Carl doesn’t care what Jewel is as long as she’s willing dress up in a dominatrix outfit and tan his fanny into rapture. Detective Charlie, meanwhile, hasn’t got a clue.

  One Night at McCool’s definitely feels made up on the spot, but made up by a narrative juggler with the canny ability to keep most of his balls in the air and the knack for distracting you from long concentrating on those he drops. This is anything but deep stuff, but it’s persistently entertaining. We aren’t convinced that Zwart necessarily had it all planned from the beginning, but he’s got a delightful way of reaching back for seemingly extraneous details and presenting them to you like party favors.

  Don’t forget that Utah has a twin brother, or the details of Carl’s flip arrogance with his therapist. Don’t forget that Randy is sentimentally attached to the snow globe his mother left him along with her deteriorating house. Most important, don’t forget how much effort Jewel puts in to fixing that house up. And don’t for a second forget what Jewel says she wants out of life. She’s willing to stoop to plenty of no good, but somebody needs to listen to the domestic nature of Jewel’s ambitions.

  Producer Michael Douglas and his fellow cast members all seem to have a grand old time in this picture. Douglas retreats from the inherent hamminess of his role by clinging fiercely to understatement. Dillon abandons the brooding figures he played in his youth to portray a schlemiel who resolutely refuses to become a doofus.

  As he is here, Goodman has always been terrific with characters who can’t see what’s right in front of their faces. Reiser was born to do myopic monstrosity. And Tyler is both sexy and vulnerable. Their sense of let’s-put-on-a-show fun is a significant part of this film’s infectious spirit. And man, what a finish. It’s been a long time since I found myself still laughing as long and as hard when the house lights came up.