Donald Faison and Mos Def consider getting new agents.

I’m sure they don’t get paid what they’re worth—hell, you can’t even see their names in the credits—but the unsung heroes of the movie business work in the trailer department. They’re the ones who can rescue some of the production money put into a dog like Next Day Air by finding enough scenes that can be re-arranged into a two-minute commercial that will make you want to spend your ticket money on it. For the same reason they are the curse of us, the viewers, who never seem to learn that a good trailer does not guarantee a good movie. (Remember, after you’ve paid for your ticket Hollywood is done with you.)

Next Day Air concerns the hurlyburly that ensues in a Philadelphia neighborhood when a stoned deliveryman leaves a box containing ten kilos of high-grade cocaine at the wrong apartment. If you’re already asking, “Who would be stupid enough to FedEx that much cocaine?” you are not the market for this movie. You would be even more astonished to see that the drug lord uses not FedEx, or even UPS, but rather a bargain-basement delivery company whose branch in Philadelphia—not a small city, if you’ve never been there—is run by a single woman and her two sons.

The sons are played by “Scrubs’” Donald Faison and Mos Def. They are featured prominently in the trailer, and Mr. Def, as I would call him were I writing for the New York Times, has the place of honor on the poster. A comedy starring these two is a movie I would like to see.

But Next Day Air is not that movie. As one part of an ensemble of about a dozen, Faison is the best thing here, but he really doesn’t have any competition. Def, I read in the press notes, stepped in to substitute for another actor who dropped out at the last moment. He’s in two scenes, either one of which could have been cut with no damage to the plot. They are funny more because you look at them and think of other times they have made you laugh, not because they have anything particularly amusing to do here.

The rest of the plot involves the incompetent bank robbers to whom the drugs are delivered, the gangster cousin to whom they want to sell them, and the Puerto Rican neighbor and his girlfriend who were supposed to get the drugs and who are charged with getting them back. A film like this might be expected to develop snowballing complications that build up a head of steam. Instead, it’s so plodding that the script has to throw in a few dull tangents to stretch the film out to 80 minutes. It all ends up with a showdown that has no impact because we really don’t care anything one way or another about any of these characters.

Publicity for the film, which was directed by Benny Boom and written by Blair Cobbs (a first effort for both) suggests that they have fashioned an over-the-top comic crime drama in the mode of Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino. In their dreams. An action movie like this should run on adrenaline: this has veins clogged with molasses. A comedy should at least make you feel like the cast had fun making it: these actors look like they can’t wait to get off the ugly sets and fire their agents. And I would be hard pressed to blame them.

I did like the music.

—M. Faust

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