“What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” stars Martin Lawrence as a Kevin Caffery, a small time thief who gets a tip on easiest heist of his career. The heist involves stealing from billionaire Max Fairbanks’ (Danny DeVito) beach front mansion. The catch is that Max can't be in the mansion because of a legal mishap.

When Kevin sneaks into Max’s mansion, he finds that Max is having an affair in the mansion at the time of the heist. Max catches Kevin and steals his lucky pinky ring. This causes Kevin heart-ache when he promised his new girlfriend that he would never lose the ring. Kevin vows to get it back.

Will Kevin get the ring back? What will these two vastly different crooks do to each other during the “game”?

“What’s the Worst That Could Happen?” wants so very hard to be clever and hilarious. It tries really hard to pull the audience along as the two crooks take stabs at each other to get the ring. The whole “ring” thing runs out of steam 40 minutes into the picture and the audience is left with two rather humorous situations before the end of the film. One of those situations occurs when Kevin aggravates Max on CSPAN. This whole scenario is incredibly funny and when the translator for the deaf is thrown in you may just bust a gut. There are other situations which are hilarious but that CSPAN event is the showcase of the film. Furthermore, the “ring” thing does get annoying after the 40 minutes. It is just a ring! Even the girlfriend doesn’t see the logic in Kevin’s insane pursuit. It all boils down to a clash of egos.

Danny DeVito has been type-cast as the conniving short-little tyrant for so many years. His role here as Max isn’t a stretch one bit. What’s is utterly uncanny is that he still seems to enjoy playing the same role each time. I have liked DeVito’s dramatic turns in the past because I know how talented he is. It truly is a shame for him to keep going back to this kind of role.

As for Lawrence, this is a different kind of film for him. I liked seeing him trying to stretch his on-screen charisma and branch out into more diverse kinds of roles. But he really needs to find a rip-roaringly funny script to put all his magic into. This wasn’t it.

Actually I found myself laughing more at some of the supporting players than the leads themselves. William Fichtner’s overly strange detective and John Leguizamo as Lawrence’s partner in crime were definitely some stand-outs. I loved the subtle comments that Fichtner would relay to his dogs when he was walking them. I also loved Leguizamo’s ad-libbing through the auction and Arabian house-seekers scene. Leguizamo blew Lawrence off the screen with his hilarious dialogue and brilliant humor.

To answer the film’s question, this isn’t the worst that could have happened but it could have been a lot better.

(2.5 of 5) So Says the Soothsayer.