Tricked's greatest pleasure is watching one suggestion for scenes (and developments within scenes) quickly follow another รก la some sort of incident-delivering assembly line.
The results of the experiment don't quite make all the tedium of construction worthwhile ... The pieces fit together, but the impact is fleeting at best.
In the end, the fruit of all these labors seems hardly different from what could have been drafted by a few paid scribes, although Tricked does contain more plot twists than the usual hour-long narrative.
In Tricked (Verhoeven calls it "My 14 1/2, like Fellini's 8 1/2"), the character-driven story still relies on a visual effect - the exposed behind-the-scenes process of filmmaking.
As ever, the paradox of Mr. Verhoeven's style is that it seems to wallow in tastelessness and transgression even as he remains one of the most classical movie craftsmen.
