Pure pulp silliness. I’m kind of surprised this isn’t considered an early aughts so-bad-it’s-good classic. The plot is so absurd it quickly becomes a total hoot.

John Travolta (still sporting his ridiculous Swordfish hair even though this time his character is a humble boat builder instead of a deranged genius hacker man) discovers that his ex-wife's nice guy new husband (Vince Vaughn) is Not a Nice Guy And In Fact May Have Murdered Someone. No one believes Travolta; not his ex-wife, not Travolta’s own girlfriend, not the police. No one.

Highlights include Vaughn immediately turning on his new stepson because he is shitty at playing catch (“I’m gonna throw the ball. But I don’t want to run for the ball, I don’t want to jump for the ball, I want the ball to come to me. Aim and concentrate!”) Vaughn roasting the stepson for being a little twerp while the stepson is hiding within earshot (“I put up with the damn kid because I got no choice!”), and the cops immediately dismissing the kid’s (100 percent accurate) story that Vaughn killed a guy and burned the evidence because it’s late at night and I guess the cop just wants to go home. (“I’m not wasting any more time on this sick kid’s bullshit story!”) Oh, and this all happens the same night that everyone finds out that Travolta's ex-wife (Teri Polo?!?) is already pregnant with Vaughn’s kid. What a night!

In the third act, Travolta follows clues from Steve Buscemi to a sex worker to a pro basketball team to a Web 1.0 search (on MSN.com!) to an article on a dumpy Chicago newspaper website (with at least one glaring typo!) which proves that Vaughn is not who he says he is. Then Vaughn decides enough is enough and he tries to kill Travolta in his boathouse by setting it on fire. But he's such an idiot that he lights himself on fire in the process, then immediately goes home, where Teri Polo sees a news report about the fire on TV and then finds Vaughn treating his burns with the bathroom door open. At last, she finally believes Travolta — at which point the movie becomes a full-blown PG-13 slasher film.

The whole film is less than 90 minutes with credits, and I was chuckling pretty much from start to finish. The Flop House should cover this thing. It’s absolute nonsense! But it’s fun nonsense.