Andy Fidler is a white-bread Midwestern dental supply salesman traveling to the big city for a sales conference.

	Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy prove opposites are funny in "The Man." Click photo for larger image. "The Man" Rating: PG-13 for language, rude dialogue and some violence Starring: Eugene Levy and Samuel L. Jackson Director: Les Mayfield "The Man" Web site Post-Gazette Family Film Guide review of "The Man"

Special Agent Derrick Vann is a corner-cutting cop under investigation for the murder of his former partner during an arms heist.

Geeky Andy wants nothing more than to deliver his speech and fly home to his family.

Shady Derrick wants to do whatever it takes, legally or not, to clear his name and catch or kill his partner's murderer.

In a case of mistaken identity, Andy is sitting in the wrong chair in the wrong diner during an off-the-books sting operation, and a gun dealer hoping to make an illicit sale thinks he's "the man."

Andy Fidler, meet Derrick Vann.

Too many buddy-cop movies are stamped from the same cookie cutter. Director Les Mayfield starts with what could have been just another shoot-'em-up action comedy. But "The Man" breaks the pattern with the brilliant pairing of two personalities from opposite ends of the Hollywood spectrum.

Eugene Levy has built a 25-year career on variations of the nerdy, bespectacled everyman in unusual situations that he invented on "Second City." He's played other personalities, most recently in "A Mighty Wind," but his uptight regular guy keeps coming back, as he did in "American Wedding" as the constantly startled father. It isn't often that a character actor can carry a film. But a thoughtful script by actor-screenwriter Jim Piddock and former "Saturday Night Live" writer Margaret Oberman gives Levy mountains of rich scenarios to work with.

Samuel L. Jackson cusses better than anybody in the business. For a quarter century he's been playing drug addicts, criminals and dominating tough guys. Remember his great delivery of a great line from "Pulp Fiction": "And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers, and you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee."

Piddock and Oberman offer Jackson nothing as memorable as that. But Derrick terrorizes and manipulates wimpy Andy nonetheless.

Did I mention this is a comedy? By playing their characters straight, Levy and Jackson create a platform begging for bursts of comic relief. Instead of milking the script of every possible guffaw, they keep their characters grounded in reality, allowing them to grind at each other like plate tectonics that inevitably release that pent-up pressure in earthshaking moments that rock the comic Richter Scale.

I laughed so hard I embarrassed myself. "The Man" is tense, dramatic and unexpectedly, incredibly, uproariously funny.