When trailers for “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” started hitting the airwaves in late December, they didn’t exactly put members of the Academy on notice. The tale of an overweight mall cop who takes his job too seriously doesn’t seem like it would resonate too deeply come awards season. And it won’t.
But it is a comedy that provides good, clean laughs for what it offers, and sometimes that’s all it takes to make a decent movie. What starts as a standard dumb famly comedy evolves into a decent send-up of the over-the-top ‘80’s action movies.
Kevin James plays the rotund title character, a mall security guard who enjoys peanut butter on his pie and harbors dreams of being a real cop, channeling that ambition into his mall security job. A single parent, his daughter and mother spend their time trying to find him a girlfriend via an online dating site.
The role is similar to the one that made him famous, in “The King of Queens,” with Jayma Mays playing the part of the attractive woman that is inexplicably attracted to him.
The most serious part of the film is the opening credits, when a “JFK-“ like theme plays over close-ups of a mall security badge. From there it devolves into slapstick comedy, jokes so bad they’re funny and other staples of mediocre comedies.
The plot of the film is incredibly cliché, with the single-parent James falling for the doe-eyed woman who works at the wig kiosk, and he is forced to save her when she is taken hostage by the terrorists who take over the mall.
While the plot has more holes in it than , the jokes are solid. James provides the best segway humor since Will Arnett in “Arrested Development,” and he can take a pratfall with the best of them.
Since the movie is rated PG, it provides laughs without the nudity and profanity that so many comedies of late rely so heavily upon.
The villains are a group of terrorists who, for some reason, prefer to skate, leap or bike their way around the mall, and very rarely do they use their guns. The terrorists are so hackneyed at times that it’s painful to watch.
The supporting cast mostly drags down the movie, with the exception of Stephen Ranna zzisi, who plays a pen salesman in the mall. He draws laughs every time he is on the screen, and he is the perfect obnoxious foil to Kevin James’ goodhearted nature. Think of him as the Ellis character from “Die Hard.”
Throughout the course of the movie, James becomes a combination of John McClane and Rambo. Except in this case, the Nakatomi Tower has been replaced with the West Orange Pavilion Mall and the Vietnamese jungle is the Rainforest Café.
In a world of gross-out comedies, “Paul Blart” shows that you don’t need f-bombs or nudity to get laughs. Sometimes a fat man on a Segway running into the back of a minivan will do just fine.
Rating - $6.00
Showing posts with label six dollars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label six dollars. Show all posts
Friday, January 23, 2009
Friday, December 19, 2008
The Day the Earth Stood Still
If you think Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” showed the danger of polluting the planet, you haven’t seen anything yet.
“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the big-budget remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic, replaces the fear of nuclear apocalypse with the consequences of our effect on the environment.
The cheesy charm of the old version has been replaces with the typical nuances of a blockbuster: computer animation and product placements aplenty. Appropriately enough, the fate of humanity is decided under the golden arches.
The iconic Klaatu is played by (gulp) Keanu Reeves, who actually seems to be at home playing a creature that isn’t quite sure how to be human.
Jennifer Connelly plays Dr. Helen Benson, who for some reason is more qualified than anyone to deal with the incoming aliens. Perpetually glassy-eyed, she always looks on the edge of breaking down completely.
Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith, plays Connelly’s stepson, and the two are still dealing with the loss of Smith’s father. The trio of Reeves, Connelly and Smith form a Terminator-Sarah Connor-John Connor kind of relationship, where destruction and salvation walk hand in hand.
The first hour of the movie is a masterful exercise in building suspense. The viewer is a character in the movie, as we follow Connelly from a late night trip into a government headquarters, where we learn about an imminent threat to the earth.
The special effects are very well done. When a mysterious orb appears in Central Park, the audience is standing right next to the confused New Yorkers witnessing something that humankind has never experienced.
The supporting cast is star-studded, included Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense and John Cleese as an eccentric astrophysicist. While the movie is essentially a three-person show, the other actors hold up their part nicely.
The movie’s failing is that is digs itself too deep in the suspense, and doesn’t know quite how to get itself out. When it hits its peak after the first hour, it doesn’t know where to go, so it tries to back out with computer-generated effects.
The movie is almost worth seeing in the theater, because a large screen and digital sound heighten the atmosphere at the beginning of the film. But whether or not $10 is worth an hour or so of good special effects is up to you.
Rating - $6.00
“The Day the Earth Stood Still,” the big-budget remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic, replaces the fear of nuclear apocalypse with the consequences of our effect on the environment.
The cheesy charm of the old version has been replaces with the typical nuances of a blockbuster: computer animation and product placements aplenty. Appropriately enough, the fate of humanity is decided under the golden arches.
The iconic Klaatu is played by (gulp) Keanu Reeves, who actually seems to be at home playing a creature that isn’t quite sure how to be human.
Jennifer Connelly plays Dr. Helen Benson, who for some reason is more qualified than anyone to deal with the incoming aliens. Perpetually glassy-eyed, she always looks on the edge of breaking down completely.
Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith, plays Connelly’s stepson, and the two are still dealing with the loss of Smith’s father. The trio of Reeves, Connelly and Smith form a Terminator-Sarah Connor-John Connor kind of relationship, where destruction and salvation walk hand in hand.
The first hour of the movie is a masterful exercise in building suspense. The viewer is a character in the movie, as we follow Connelly from a late night trip into a government headquarters, where we learn about an imminent threat to the earth.
The special effects are very well done. When a mysterious orb appears in Central Park, the audience is standing right next to the confused New Yorkers witnessing something that humankind has never experienced.
The supporting cast is star-studded, included Kathy Bates as the Secretary of Defense and John Cleese as an eccentric astrophysicist. While the movie is essentially a three-person show, the other actors hold up their part nicely.
The movie’s failing is that is digs itself too deep in the suspense, and doesn’t know quite how to get itself out. When it hits its peak after the first hour, it doesn’t know where to go, so it tries to back out with computer-generated effects.
The movie is almost worth seeing in the theater, because a large screen and digital sound heighten the atmosphere at the beginning of the film. But whether or not $10 is worth an hour or so of good special effects is up to you.
Rating - $6.00
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