Samuel L. Jackson plays a famous black playwright who moves to an exclusive all-white resort, where the locals mistake him for a burglar in his own home. The sheriff (Dabney Coleman), who’s up for reelection and wants to mask the faux pas, enlists a petty criminal (Nicolas Cage) in a phony kidnapping scheme. Cage is the only actor allowed to do riffs on his assigned part, something he takes full advantage of; the others are stuck with their two-dimensional satirical profiles, which grow increasingly tiresome and unyielding as the comic plot predictably unfolds. (Even Jackson’s development is too simpleminded to create a full character.) E. Max Frye wrote and directed this first feature; Michael Lerner, Margaret Colin, Brad Dourif, and Bob Balaban costar. (JR)