THIS ONE IS BARRY FUNNY.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Film Critic

IF YOU'VE SEEN the posters for Barry Sonnenfeld's spry comedy, ``Big Trouble,'' you know this is an ensemble movie with lots and lots of characters. Sixteen actors have significant screen time in the movie, and one of them, Andy Richter, plays two brothers who both happen to be imbecilic security guards. (It's a great comic cameo.)

The sheer size of the cast works against the movie in its opening 20 minutes as Sonnenfeld fights to establish a rhythm for his rapid-fire humor and rotating story lines. Then a magical and rather unexpected thing happens - the movie clicks in gear. And for the next hour, ``Big Trouble'' is light on its feet, delivering beautifully realized wackiness and plenty of good-size laughs.

For Sonnenfeld, a gifted comedic director, the movie marks a welcome return to the kind of form he displayed in movies like ``Get Shorty'' and ``Men in Black.'' Sonnenfeld has always been most at home with off-kilter worlds - that's why ``Wild Wild West'' was such a miscalculation - and environments don't come any more off-kilter than they do in South Florida (or ``Weirdsville, USA,'' as one character puts it), the setting for ``Big Trouble.''

The movie has multiple story lines, but what it's really about is the things a harried father has to do to win the respect of his adolescent child. The father here is Eliot Arnold (Tim Allen), a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper columnist who quits his job and starts his own advertising agency. (``Big Trouble'' is based on a novel by Dave Barry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist who doesn't own an ad agency, but has had a TV show based on his life.)

Eliot soon finds himself mixed up with an unhappy trophy wife (Rene Russo) who's married to a corrupt businessman (Stanley Tucci) who's being pursued by a couple of Jersey hit men (Dennis Farina, Jack Kehler), who are having their job confounded by a pair of lame-brained petty thieves (Tom Sizemore, Johnny Knoxville) and a hippie dude (Jason Lee) with a special love for Fritos.

There's also a comely maid (Sofia Vergara), two sarcastic teen-agers (Zooey Deschanel and Ben Foster), a mismatched pair of cops (Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton), a couple of rule-bending FBI agents (Omar Epps and Dwight ``Heavy D'' Myers), a hallucinogenic toad and a nuclear bomb that keeps changing hands.

It sounds like a lot, but Sonnenfeld expertly keeps the story humming and the laughs coming at a steady pace. The movie skewers a barrage of pop-culture topics, including the inanity of sports talk radio (listen for Sonnenfeld's voice as a dimwit caller) and incompetent airport security. Yes, it's a little weird watching a nuclear bomb pass unimpeded through the check-in line (the movie's original September release date was changed after 9-11), but, in the right hands, it still makes for effective dark humor.

``Big Trouble'' benefits greatly from its cast, which smartly combines familiar faces (Farina, Allen, Sizemore) with fresh talent (Knoxville, Deschanel and Foster all make good impressions here). The movie is far from perfect, but in an age where flatulence passes for humor, ``Big Trouble's'' smart fun qualifies as a breath of fresh air.

BIG TROUBLE - Three stars

(Rated PG-13: language, crude humor and sex-related material)

Starring: Tim Allen, Rene Russo, Stanley Tucci, Tom Sizemore, Johnny Knoxville, Dennis Farina, Jack Kehler, Patrick Warburton, Janeane Garofalo, Ben Foster, Zooey Deschanel, Jason Lee.

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld.

Running time: 1 hr. 24 min.

Playing: Wide release.