Review
Review Date: 18-January-09
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk
Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)
Your humble Jujube critic must be one of millions of adults who can mentally compose a grocery list and walk at the same time. Who can derive meaning from a book that has words rather than pictures of smiling choo-choos. Who, when faced with a snarling tiger on the left and a room full of bunnies on the right, would probably go right. Whose intellect, in other words, outshines that of your average Jello mold. Why, then, do movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop thrive?
I make a plea to anyone who did not hate this movie and is capable of reaching the second paragraph of this review: don't let the bastards get away with it. In releasing movies like this, Hollywood is insulting you. And that's not the worst part. I have seen too often how people tend to live down to the low expectations provided them, and brain-dead cinema is a powerful ally of marketers, television, and other culprits who can make an entire nation more idiotic than it ought to be. "It's all in fun" people say when justifying giving in to trash, as if their minds and characters had no value to or claim upon themselves and entertainment was by definition infantile. I feel ashamed for falling for the Paul Blart preview, although it exclusively showed the best parts of the movie. Which goes to show that the studio knows exactly what I'm talking about and could not care less.
The root of my vitriol against this waste of time is that the premise held promise. Paul Blart (Kevin James) is an unassuming nice guy who dreams of going to the police academy but cannot pass the entrance test because he has hypoglycemia. So he is a dedicated security guard instead. On the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year, thieves take over and seal off his mall, leaving Paul as its only defender. He is unarmed and not very tough, but he is on his turf with all the things in a mall at his disposal. Just think of what he could do!
But no, thinking is out of the question and besides, a comatose state settles in by the time the heist gets under way. The first long stretch of the movie is devoted to all the clichés known to Hollywood when dealing with overweight men. Paul is lonely, Paul lives with his mother, Paul hasn't dated in eons, Paul is unused to going to bars, Paul has a crush on a sales clerk (Jayma Mays, who already has a lock on the Egregious Overacting Award for 2009). Most hideously, Paul is the single parent of a saccharine kid whose type only exists in bad flicks. About the third time his daughter slathered him with advice about life and love, I leaned over and puked into my cup holder. If I had been thinking, I would have realized that it had no bottom, but I figured if folks in the audience were responding to the movie, the sound and smell of dripping vomit would be no big deal.
The movie inches towards tolerable when it focuses on Paul's attempts to thwart the bad guys and their leader (Keir O'Donnell). Still, it fails to capitalize on the "biggest shopping day of the year" idea and keeps wandering off on nondescript tangents involving the cops outside the mall. Then it drags the daughter into danger just when we had reason to hope she was safely out of the picture. She walks into the mall oblivious of the takeover even though the local police and a SWAT team have it surrounded. I'm sure that's plausible if I hit my temple with a hammer. But why am I even bothering with this? Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a gold mine turned into a slag heap. Deal with it as your self-respect allows.
Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
