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Set in LA among the same narcissistic, vain and pop culture-obsessed generation already celebrated in Kevin Smith's Clerks and Doug Liman's Swingers, Free Enterprise is a smart-aleck comedy that consciously holds a mirror up to the lives of twenty- and thirtysomethings everywhere. Anyone who grew up in the shadows of Star Trek and Star Wars will find plenty to laugh about and identify with here. The loose premise follows two self-professed geeks: Mark (Eric McCormack), in a delightful spin on Logan's Run, is agonising about reaching his 30th birthday before he has achieved anything much at all, while his slacker pal Robert (Rafer Wiegel) neglects his daytime editing job to woo a comic-reading, nerdy yet totally babelicious wish-fulfilment girlfriend. The great joy of the movie, however, is not the constant parade of witty movie in-jokes, but the appearance of William Shatner as himself. He plays a washed-up, boozy actor desperately touting to anyone who will listen his idea for "William Shatner's William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: The Musical" (words W. Shakespeare, music W. Shatner), displaying all the while a refreshing gift for comic understatement. Shatner brings real pathos and self-deprecating humour to the depiction of the gulf between the other characters' hero-worship of his on-screen persona and his subjective reality as a misunderstood actor. By the time he gets round to performing a mind-boggling bizarre rap version of Marc Anthony's soliloquy, the ageing Captain Kirk has redeemed himself, both in the eyes of the characters and the viewing audience. --Mark Walker

Release Date: Jan 6, 2003
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