In my opinion, Bill Murray is a national treasure. He has always been, and probably always will be, one of my favorite comic actors.

Murray is funniest when he plays a character with a bit of a sarcastic, biting edge. In short, when he’s a jerk.

Look at “Scrooged,” for example. Murray plays a jerk TV executive and is hilarious in parts such as when he wants to staple tiny antlers to a mouse’s head to make them stick. The rest of the movie isn’t that great, but Murray is funny.

In “The Man Who Knew Too Little” Murray isn’t quite as funny because he’s playing a nice guy, some schlub who runs a Blockbuster Video in Des Moines. He lacks the necessary edge.

Murray is Wallace Ritchie, who goes to England to visit his little brother James (Peter Gallagher).

The visit is a surprise and clashes with plans investment banker James already has for the evening.

So James sets up Wallace for the night with something called the Theatre of Life, which is a theatre troupe which involves a participant in a seemingly real drama.

Wallace answers the phone at the wrong time, though, and ends up involved in an absolutely ridiculous real spy drama.

But Wallace thinks it’s all part of the play, from the “first scene” when he gets mugged, all the way to the end, when he unwittingly disarms a bomb.

That’s the whole plot. A little thin to say the least. The movie is trying to be a farce, a parody of all those equally silly James Bond movies.

Of course, I’ve always felt the James Bond movies were so ridiculous they were parodies of themselves.

The idea behind “The Man Who Knew Too Little” just isn’t enough to sustain an entire movie. (It’s almost not enough to sustain an entire review of the movie.)

The running gag is that Wallace thinks everything happening is a part of the play his brother paid for, which does provide some laughs, particularly when he calls a “time out” because he gets something in his eye.

The laughs are few and far between, unfortunately.

The funniest scenes are when Murray comes close to unleashing the jerk within — like when the cops stop him and he proceeds to berate the officer because he’s a secret agent on a mission. (Still thinking it’s all make-believe.)

The movie is full of dialogue that can be taken both ways. Wallace means one thing and the spies take it another way.

The fact that the spies’ code language includes terms like “flush” and “plumber” doesn’t help matters.

One bright point in the movie is Peter Gallagher as Wallace’s little brother. Gallagher usually plays the vacuous hunk roles, but here he shows a real knack for comedy and some funny facial expressions.

By the end, I couldn’t buy that Wallace hadn’t figured out the truth.

Hey, those bullets are ripping holes in the wall right next to your head. Hello, that helicopter just blew up. Wake up and smell the cafe latte, buddy.

Overall, “The Man Who Knew Too Little” is more clever than funny. It’s not even that clever.

Here’s a typical joke: An assassin called the Butcher really is a butcher — ha, ha, ha.

Like I said, a little bit thin. There’s nothing bad about the movie, just nothing really great, either.

You’ll get more laughs if you rent a funnier Bill Murray movie. I recommend “Groundhog Day.”

2 stars out of five.

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Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.