WHO IS CLETIS TOUT? []

A poor man’s “Get Shorty.” Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (profanity, violence, sexuality). At the Empire, the Angelika and the Sutton.

———–

THE good news about “Who is Cletis Tout?” is that Tim Allen is a riot as a movie-obsessed hit man who quotes lines from classic films – while constantly complaining they don’t make them like that anyone.

The bad news about this late entry in the Quentin Tarantino-wannabe sweepstakes is that it turns out to be the exactly the kind of movie Allen’s character puts down – with laborious plotting and dialogue that poses no competition to Elmore Leonard, to put it mildly.

Even more disappointingly, Allen doesn’t play the central role in this tale about a sleazy tabloid journalist, Cletis Tout, who gets iced early in the proceedings because he tried to blackmail a mob scion.

Because of the efforts of a crooked coroner (Billy Connolly), the mob thinks Tout is still alive.

That’s because his identity has been filched by Finch (Christian Slater), who has just escaped from prison with magician-turned-jewel thief Micah (Richard Dreyfuss).

Finch suddenly finds himself being targeted by comic hit men who think he’s Tout – and trying to get back into prison for reasons far too complicated to explain.

“A classic twist,” proclaims Allen’s character, Critical Jim.

He isn’t close to being right, but Jim – who hears most of the story from Finch in a convoluted series of flashbacks that tries to mimic “Pulp Fiction” – is so moved that he tries to orchestrate a happy ending for Tess and Finch.

Allen gets almost all of the laughs in writer-director Chris Ver Wiel’s Canadian-shot comedy, whose script is in dire need of a few more rewrites.

It’s almost worth the price of admission to see Allen paying homage to “Singin’ in the Rain” in the final sequence.

Almost.