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Friday
16Jan2009

Movie Review - 'Paul Blart: Mall Cop'

DateFriday, January 16, 2009 at 2:25AM
Paul Blart: Mall Cop

Starring Kevin James, Kier O'Donnell, and Jayma Mays
Directed by Steve Carr
Rated PG

paulblart_galleryteaser.jpg I don't want it to sound like this is a crime against humanity. The movie's OK, and probably better than it should be. It's certainly better than I expected. But I've seen Kevin James do good work. Watch him in Hitch. Watch however much of The King of Queens you can tolerate and you'll see some highlights.

Truly, the only thing giving Paul Blart: Mall Cop momentum is that Kevin James is a very likable guy on screen and off. He's goofy. He's fun. He's comfortable with the jokes about his size, because he seems perfectly at ease about being a rather husky guy.

The concept, however is decidedly leaden. Mall cops make easy targets for comedy, but James somehow imbues Paul Blart with dignity. Instead of shopping mall security officer being where he wound up, Paul Blart sees it as the place he's starting from, even though he's been stuck there for ten years. There's something quite appealing about that notion, but we get rolling into the story soon enough, and what could be special about this movie becomes a memory.

There's a robbery during Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. Perhaps you're asking yourself why this movie didn't come out two months ago. It's a fair question. But there's a mall-wide robbery, orchestrated from the inside, and even though the thieves think the coast is clear, Blart happens to be on duty, as it were.

At first, he begins defeating robbers through a series of Clouseau-like bumbles, but slowly, Blart gains confidence in himself and his traps become more clever, at one point directly lifting a famous scene from the second Rambo movie while hiding in a Rainforest Cafe.

The action is surprisingly effective; James is an athletic big guy, doing many of his own falls and riding the hell out of a Segway. His adversaries are all professional extreme athletes, stuntpeople, or freerunners, which gives the heist a fun bit of action to watch.

But the comedy really, really drags. There are two genuinely big laughs here, one about 25 minutes in and the other about an hour later. There are little spikes along the way, but not enough for this to be a great comedy.

How strange that it's what Kevin James does best that lets him down here and what you'd never think he'd be known for that I wish we saw more of.

I still see something in James' performance I can cling to; he's a lot like John Candy in that way. Candy was clearly a better actor and a better comedian, but you could put John Candy in any movie, ask him to be funny, and more often than not, you could get funny. And not always the same funny. Stripes is different from Planes, Trains is different from Uncle Buck. But you were always on John Candy's side.

I didn't particularly like his new movie, I don't see Candy's kind of range at this point, and I'm not on Kevin James' side yet, but I think I could be persuaded.

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AuthorColin Boyd | | in , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

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Saturday, February 21, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterjim

Found the movie online at http://leafpen.com/mallcop Just had to fill out some lame survey to get the movie to play. Not sure how long it will stay up...

Saturday, February 21, 2009 | Unregistered Commenterjason

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