Vince Vaughn has been mailing it in, doing one movie a year and choosing his projects based on which had the nicest spread at craft services or was shooting in Tahiti since around 2005, but now he’s through screwing around. He’s about to make you remember that fast-talking scamp you fell in love with so many years ago.  And by that I mean he’s doing a film called Insane Laws, which definitely doesn’t sound like a poster Tracy Jordan would have in his dressing room on 30 Rock.  Jason Bateman just joined the cast.

Universal Pictures is in early talks with Jason Bateman to star with Vince Vaughn in The Insane Laws, a comedy that will mark the feature directorial debut of screenwriter Jeremy Garelick. Universal picked up the project in March after Sony Pictures put it into turnaround. Neal Moritz and his Original Film banner is still producing it, and Vaughn has been eyeing it for some time. He and Garelick have been close since Garelick co-write the Vaughn-starrer The Break-Up [which, to be fair, was better than it should've been. -Ed]. Garelick also did uncredited script work on The Hangover. The plan is for Bateman and Vaughn to play longtime best friends, who’ve shared everything, from college to the time both got married and had kids at the same time. Cut to when those kids are away at college, and, unbeknownst to their parents, falling in love. The best friend relationship is sorely tested when the daughter of Vaughn’s character gets pregnant. The actors just did a read-through of the material, and it could be in production by the fall. [Deadline]

Well I for one can’t wait for “The Insane Laws.”  I just hope it doesn’t jeopardize some of the other Vaughn-Garelick projects.  Projects such as “Women Be Shoppin’,” “The Deal with Airline Food,” “Men Trying to Watch the Game,” “Half Jewish, Half Italian, ALL CRAZY!”, and “Can You Imagine If Hurricanes Was Named After Sistaz?  Y’all Better Hide When Hurricane Shaniqua Come Around! She Be Comin’ After You Wit’ Her Shoe.”  That one has Martin Lawrence attached, obvi.

In yet another story that would work better as satire, Vince Vaughn is set to join Insane Laws, from the writer of The Break Up.  Ooh, in-law jokes.  Timely.  WOMEN BE SHOPPIN’, YO.  In related news, we’ve now reached the point in Vince Vaughn’s career when The Break-Up seems like one of his better movies.

Universal is in negotiations to pick up The Insane Laws, a relationship comedy from writer-director Jeremy Garelick, out of turnaround from Columbia. The project will act as a starring vehicle for Vince Vaughn.  Based a bit on Garelick’s own life, Insane Laws focuses on two best friends and how their lives are impacted when their grown children fall in love, with one man’s daughter becoming pregnant by his best friend’s son. [HollywoodReporter]

The Insane Laws?  The Insane Laws.  Why, that sounds so wacky, my computer threw a tomato at me when I typed it.  This whole thing sounds like a Smothers Brothers sketch.

(Game: Count the actresses still working in this picture.)

So Paramount has plans to make a Baywatch movie, and they’re hoping to reimagine it as a comedy (even though it was kind of already a comedy). From Variety:

Hoping to add some giggle to the jiggle [you can't see me, but I'm slamming my head in my desk drawer right now -Ed.] Paramount Pictures has set Jeremy Garelick to rewrite and direct a bigscreen comedy based on the syndicated series. The film marks Garelick’s directing debut. The scribe, who most recently did an uncredited rewrite of “The Hangover” with Todd Phillips, has written “Murray at Large” for Phillips to produce and possibly direct at Warner Bros., and also scripted “The Insane Laws” at Columbia.

DreamWorks paid seven figures for remake rights in 2005 and got a script by Jay Scherick and David Ronn [credits: Norbit, The Zookeeper, National Security] that was heavy on action. Garelick was sent the script do a punch-up. Though he never saw the original TV show and its well-rounded cast [another subtle tit pun! you're on a roll, Variety writer guy!], he saw an opportunity to turn it into broad comedy.

“It felt like the template to do a movie that was similar to ‘Stripes’ and ‘Police Academy,’ the comedies I loved growing up,” [THIS SENTENCE HAS NO PREDICATE. GUH.] Garelick said. “Rather than trying to pitch the tone, I figured it would be easier to write the first act to convey who these characters were,” Garelick said.  Some 37 pages later, Garelick has landed the job. The script now focuses on two unlikely lifeguard candidates trying to catch on alongside the buff bodies that will be as abundant in the film as they were in the TV series.

I don’t even know where to start with this story.  First off, who hasn’t seen Baywatch? Secondly, they already made this, it was called Son of the Beach. Third, The Insane Laws? There’s no way a movie with that title is anything but a puke-filled afterbirth.  Finally, DreamWorks spent seven figures for the rights and then hired the guys from Norbit to write it?  That’s like buying a Gulfstream jet and handing the keys to your landscaper.  Every person in this story should be fired out of a cannon into a volcano.