Starring Bill Murray, Joanne Whalley and Peter Gallagher Directed by Jon Amiel Rated PG-13, with comic violence and sexual references Running time 95 minutes Jack gives this film a rating of 6 out of 10

(Nov. 14, 1997) -- Just as Bruce Willis and Richard Gere arrive on the scene to do some serious espionage in The Jackal, along comes Bill Murray to remind us that the spy game can also be pretty silly.

Murray stars in The Man Who Knew Too Little as a sweetly innocent everyman -- more inept than most -- who stumbles into the world of spies, assassins and mad bombers.

Though it is tempting to contrast the film with the other popular recent spy comedy, Austin Powers, The Man Who Knew Too Little is of a different sort -- more farce than spoof, and an obvious attempt to generate the sort of laughs we used to get from Peter Sellers in the old Pink Panther films.

The likable Murray is consistently amusing. But despite a clever premise, major belly laughs are rare. As directed by Jon Amiel, The Man Who Knew Too Little is a bit too loopy and loony for its own good. It fails to build much momentum.

Murray stars as Wallace Ritchie, a milquetoast Iowa video-store operator who takes a vacation to visit his younger brother, an international banker named James (Peter Gallagher), in London.

But Wallace picks the wrong moment to arrive on James' doorstep -- he is entertaining important clients. So James sends Wallace out for the evening on a special treat: He's bought him a ticket for the Theater of Life, a participatory, improvised street-theater experience.

Wallace is supposed to start by taking a call at a corner phone booth, which will be his beginning assignment in a supposed, make-believe saga of intrigue. Instead, Wallace accidentally gets a call intended for a real assassin -- and soon finds himself entangled in a complex spy incident in which he is the only person play-acting.

As well-played by Murray, Wallace blithely stumbles through the operation, never understanding that it is for real, even as bullets fly by and he is tripping over bodies. (He assumes the other "characters," including the stiffs, are good actors.)

In Wallace, Murray creates a new sort of character, one of surprisingly sweet innocence, bearing a naivete that contrasts amusingly with the mayhem around him. I only wish the mayhem was more tautly strung, and that Amiel and the writers had created more intrigue in supporting characters -- the script's "damsel in distress," played by Joanne Whalley, is never clearly defined; the brother played by Gallagher seems alternately too smart and too dumb; and the rest of the espionage cast are cardboard cutouts.

But Murray is humorously ingratiating and inventive. Without him, The Man Who Knew Too Little would be The Movie With Too Little.