Entertainment

DOUGLAS NUTS SO FUNNY

MICHAEL Douglas puts on his crazy hat for “King of California,” a caper comedy that forgot to put in the laughs. Douglas’ Charlie, with Jerry Garcia hair, a mad-prophet beard and cueball eyes, has just been released from a Southern California mental hospital where he came across a book about ancient Spanish treasure in the hills.

He goes home to live with his smart, self-sufficient teen daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) who acts in loco parentis of her loco parent while he drags her around suburbia muttering about how he’s cracked a 17th-century code that will lead him to the buried doubloons – which he is convinced are buried 6 feet under a Costco.

The movie doesn’t work either as a plausible treasure hunt (wouldn’t the Costco have excavated its foundations when it was built?) or as a comedy.

Attempted laugh lines include “Breaking and entering makes everything taste different,” “Come on, my little sack of potatoes,” and “She had an eating disorder. She went to the hospital and died.”

Moreover, merely including lots of shots of Applebee’s and Chuck E. Cheese does not constitute satire.

A thick coat of wacky soundtrack music tries to convince us funny things are going on, but the movie is just a tiresomely drawn-out version of a wacky Cosmo Kramer scheme that would have been but one of four plots on a 22-minute “Seinfeld” episode (there’s even a Seinfeldian reference to a hand model who is fanatical about wearing gloves).

This weak script would not have been filmed if it hadn’t been for Douglas’ weakness for acting as nutty as a Snickers bar.

KING OF CALIFORNIA

* 1/2

Should have stayed buried.

Running time: 93 minutes. Rated PG-13 (profanity, drug references). At the Angelika and the Lincoln Square.