Comments: This town isn't small enough for the both of them.
Summary: "Welcome to Mooseport" is such a blandly likable comedy that your grandmother could watch it and wish for a little sex and violence to keep her awake. Perhaps the phenomenal popularity of TV's "Everybody Loves Raymond" made Ray Romano proceed too cautiously in selecting this small-town comedy as his film debut; without a live audience and an endless supply of punchy one-liners at his disposal, his domestic everyman persona seems a bit lost, ill-defined and uncertain how to respond when a former U.S. President (Gene Hackman) (1) moves to the quiet, jovial Maine burg of Mooseport, where Romano's the beloved plumber and hardware store proprietor; (2) proceeds to make moves on Ray's long-time girlfriend (Maura Tierney, from "ER"); and (3) runs against our ol' pal Ray in Mooseport's homespun mayoral election. Hackman's got some stellar support from Marcia Gay Harden and Rip Torn (and, to a lesser degree, Fred Savage), and Tierney's a pleasure as always, but director Donald Petrie ("Miss Congeniality") can't spin gold from straw; Tom Schulman's screenplay aims to please everyone, draining the energy from what might, in other hands, have been a deliciously devious premise. There's such a thing as being "niced" to death, and "Welcome to Mooseport" is proof. "--Jeff Shannon"""