Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

Few movies aim for mediocrity and fail to even achieve that, but Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Part Deux goes the distance. At 94 minutes, it’s an exhausting marathon with little action and zero surprises but plenty of uninteresting characters and senseless directing choices. It’s fitting that the main character is a disrespected security guard who can’t catch a break. Anyone sitting through this movie will know the feeling. It didn’t have to be this way. I’m one of the minority who liked the original, which I thought was goofy family fun. Anchored by generous everyman Kevin James, Paul Blart, the First centers around the titular mall cop’s love for his mother (Shirley Knight) and daughter (Raini Rodriguez) and his awkward attempts to romance the mall’s resident wig vendor (Jayma Mays).

This movie picks up some time after those events when things seem to be on the up and up for Paul. He’s just married wig woman and still feels good about his heist-thwarting heroics. A mere six days after his wedding though, his wife files for divorce, then his mom gets flattened by a milk truck, and he’s back to being abused by ungrateful mall patrons. His one saving grace is an invitation to a security officers convention, where he hopes to be honored with the keynote speaker slot.

The convention takes place in Las Vegas, specifically at the Wynn Hotel, which I bring up because the movie doesn’t let you forget. In fact, the city looks far more dazzling than the film itself. I rather they’d planted a camera on the Strip and screened ninety minutes of foot traffic. There would have been more drama in that than in all of this sad, sorry sequel. Sure, there is a major art theft going on, but this isn’t Ocean’s 11 and the bad guys talk about stealing paintings far more than they actually go about stealing them.

Mall Cop 2 reaches for the persistent optimism that kept the first movie afloat, but rebound Paul has gotten selfish. His motivations are less about the people and job he loves than about his own redemption, which is fine but that makes him less sympathetic. At the convention, Paul’s desperate to gain the respect and admiration of his peers since he’s not going to get it anywhere else. His daughter, Maya, does her best to brighten his mood, but she’s got her mind on more important things, like college and the cute valet (David Henrie). If there’s anything to recommend this movie, it’s Rodriguez, who is disarmingly sweet. She plays Maya like a sappy sitcom daughter but compensates with an infectious smile that makes me think better of this world.

The rift between father and daughter – he doesn’t want her to go to UCLA – points to other problems, not just in their relationship but in Paul’s patronizing attitude towards women. He’s overprotective of Maya to a fault and insists to the hotel general manager’s face that she (Daniella Alonso) is infatuated with him. This leads to so much harassment, most of which the all-male creative team pass off as good-natured gags. When Paul sees a male convention-goer (Nicholas Turturro) totally ignore a woman’s rejection, rather than telling him to lay off, Paul doubles down and insists the woman doesn’t know what she’s missing. Dude, yes, she does, and we would all do well to walk the hell away from this mess.

Released: 2015
Prod: Todd Garner, Kevin James, Adam Sandler, Jack Giarraputo
Dir: Andy Fickman
Writer: Nick Bakay, Kevin James
Cast: Kevin James, Raini Rodriguez, Neal McDonough, David Henrie, Daniella Alonso, Loni Love, D. B. Woodside, Eduardo Verástegui, Nicholas Turturro, Gary Valentine, Ana Gastayer
Time: 94 min
Lang: English
Country: United States
Reviewed: 2018

True Memoirs of an International Assassin (2016)

True Memoirs of an International Assassin is literally a white guy’s fantasy. Sam Larson (Kevin James) is an accountant by day, not a very good one by the looks of it, and an aspiring novelist by night, also not a very good one by the looks of it. With the help of his friend Amos (Ron Rifkin), who once did desk duty at Mossad, he’s working on a spy thriller. When an online publisher picks it up and takes some liberties with the marketing, Sam suddenly finds himself promoting what everyone assumes to be his own memoirs.

Before he can figure out how to talk his way out of this mess, he finds himself in a much more precarious situation. He’s kidnapped by some Venezuelan rebels and taken to that country where any number of people believe him to be an actual assassin and want his services. They all mistake him for the Ghost, the main character and super killer in his novel, but Sam can’t even stand up to his bullying coworker much less rebels, gangsters, and politicians. Initially he’s called upon by El Toro (Andy Garcia) to murder the president (Kim Coates) so that he and his fellow revolutionaries can stage a coup, but then Sam is intercepted by a Russian gangster (Andrew Howard) and a general (Yul Vazquez), all of whom also want his guns trained on the other parties.

Meanwhile, the CIA (Rob Riggle, Leonard Earl Howze) know he’s in Venezuela and that he’s being set up to murder the president, and nearly every other important player, but they’d rather just let things work themselves out and amuse themselves in the process. This basically describes every role Riggle plays, by the way. Sam soon finds out that his only friend is DEA agent Rosa (ass-kicking Zulay Henao), a bit of a lone shark trying to do good by her country and that of her parents.

The movie aspires to be a solid action comedy, and there are certainly elements of both. I can see why some might not like the back and forth between Sam and everyone else who wants to hire and/or kill him. It’s repetitive and predictable, like watching a multi-player ping pong match between amateurs. But I enjoy the fake outs and layers of deception, which force Sam to make some calculations about who he should be loyal to, or at least who will allow him the best chance of getting out alive. My favorite supporting character is Juan (a cool Maurice Compte who incidentally reminds me of a cool Martin Compston), El Toro’s lieutenant with whom Sam has a complex relationship.

A lot of his motivation comes from the fact that he’s a just a guy who longs for excitement and gets it the only way he knows how – by writing about it. The main joke is that he lives vicariously through his character. The editing jumps between his real life and the one in his imagination, especially in the first half of the movie. That gets distracting and tiresome pretty quickly. The initial disconnect is supposed to be funny, and it is mildly amusing, because most people aren’t going to suspect Kevin James as an international assassin. Mall cop, maybe. But as the situation escalates and fiction and reality become more entangled, the audience is asked to suspend our disbelief until we’re practically floating on air. Somewhere in the second act, the comedy wears out and the movie becomes nothing more than light action, lots of firefights with none of the consequences, at least not for our main heroes.

When Sam does take control of his life, however, the movie dives into a mucky post-modern minefield. He gets to live out the ending he wants, and I’m not going to root against a guy who desperately needs and gets some agency. But I’m also not terribly impressed that Sam Larsen played by Kevin James is the kind of guy who needs to feel empowered, especially when his getting a handle on things means gunning down shady Venezuelans and rescuing the hot girl, who until the end of the movie seems to have been on top of the situation. That this is a film about both living the stories we want to tell and giving voice to them, maybe let’s not go with the genial middle-aged white dude.

Released: 2016
Prod: Justin Begnaud, Raja Collins, Mark Fasano, Todd Garner
Dir: Jeff Wadlow
Writer: Jeff Morris, Jeff Wadlow
Cast: Kevin James, Zulay Henao, Andy Garcia, Maurice Compte, Kelen Coleman, Andrew Howard, Ron Rifkin, Rob Riggle, Leonard Earl Howze, Yul Vazquez, Kim Coates
Time: 98 min
Lang: English, some Spanish
Country: United States
Reviewed: 2016

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

I expected Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a comedy starring Kevin James and backed by Adam Sandler’s production company, to fall towards the Razzies end of the movie spectrum. At a glance, it looks like a collection of throwaway gags about a portly mall security guard who does his rounds on a Segway. Instead, the movie is a warm if not always funny portrait of a portly mall security guard who does his rounds on a Segway.

James plays the eponymous mall cop who aspires to join the state police. He has the mental acuity and physical ability to be a part of the force but is stopped by his hypoglycemia, as in it literally causes him to pass out just as he reaches the finish line of the exam. His optimism and devotion to his current job tides him over though, and he is especially encouraged when he notices Amy (Jayma Mays), a new salesperson at the wigs kiosk. His efforts to win her over along with his training of a new guard (Keir O’Donnell) are interrupted, however, when a gang stages a robbery and takes hostages, putting Paul’s skills to the test.

That switch from a charming romance to an action comedy is not as jarring as the realization that the movie is actually quite sweet, a departure from the cruder films in the Sandler orbit and the unfulfilled man-child vehicles of comedians like Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill. Paul Blart, both film and character, never resort to shock or an appeal to baser instincts for laughs, and the movie is, in truth, a mild and wholesome family comedy. Paul is a single father of a teenage daughter and lives with his mother. He cuts a somewhat pathetic figure, someone who gets close to his goals without ever really achieving them. But James is very likable and makes his character easy to root for, whether he’s being humiliated by a love rival or displaying his mall cop heroics in the third act. Raini Rodriguez plays his devoted daughter and wills the audience into loving her father or at the very least caring for him.

The movie is not as successful generating laughs, though a shift towards a younger target audience would do the trick. The jokes fall under three general categories: James’s rotund figure, his impressive Segway skills, and mall security. The faux seriousness of the latter underpins the film and is done in a way that keeps things from becoming too cynical. Again, perfect for a family night in. Besides James, Mays also adds to the upbeat tone, but she doesn’t do much beyond her role as idealized love interest. Bobby Cannavale chews some scenes too as Paul’s sneering former classmate and bully turned state cop.

Released: 2009
Prod: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Barry Bernardi
Dir: Steve Carr
Writer: Kevin James, Nick Bakay
Cast: Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O’Donnell, Bobby Cannavale, Adam Ferrara, Peter Gerety, Jamal Mixon, Raini Rodriguez, Shirley Knight
Time: 91 min
Lang: English
Country: United States
Reviewed: 2016