Hollywood's decision-makers are obviously deranged because they have aparticular formula they keep trying to manipulate and it never, never works. The formula is: If you pair a comic actor with an animal, your movie will make a lot of money. What exactly is the evidence for this theory? "K9"? "Turner and Hooch"? "Ed"?

Nonetheless, the animal buddy-film genre continues to pollute our theaters, apparently because someone concluded that when one of these films implodes at the box office, it's the animal's fault. Mark my words: At this very moment, some Hollywood executive is sitting in an L.A. office justifying a new expenditure of twenty or thirty million dollars by saying, "Well, the horse didn't work; let's try a camel."

"Larger than Life" tries an elephant and varies from the buddy-animal genre only in that it's more of an animal romantic comedy: Jack Corcoran (Bill Murray) inherits the beast from his late father and learns to love her despite their obvious differences. Given that the female love interest of old is now apparently replaceable with a chimp or three-toed sloth, I guess that old Hollywood adage stands true: "There's no glass ceiling if you're not even allowed to stand on the floor."