Movie Monday

I really think I should be writing something more monumental today. It is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the day before the inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama.

However, I’m sure that these two celebrations will be reported famously, and infamously, so I am going to give you the movie trailer review of: Paul Blart: Mall Cop

You really can’t find a more polar opposite when it comes to movies; though it is Number One at the box office. I can only hope this rating comes from foreign sales, where foreigners, who can’t get enough of the zany American doofus, will watch anything.

Some background: I saw two movie this weekend: The Other Boleyn Girl and Girl with a Pearl Earring (was this a Scarlett Johansson festival?) and I was struck again by the movies’ fast and loose playing with facts. I had forgotten that Elizabeth Blount is credited with giving birth to Henry VIII's son, not Mary Boleyn. Movies have always been a source of historical inaccuracy and while I can find sources on the Blount/Boleyn story; Vermeer’s wife, based on the movie, will live on as a neurotic shrew. Better to review a farce.

Movie Trailer Review of Paul Blart: Mall Cop

We learn immediately that Paul Blart is in training to become a New Jersey state cop. He fails the physical test and we next see him eating with his obese teen daughter and saying he will try again next year. A shot of big glasses of soda on the table followed by a shot of Paul’s obese wife handing him a piece of pie. He realizes the implications to his health as he lathers it with peanut butter before eating.

(Soda, pie, three obese people. We have a good public health message in the making here but I doubt anything will come of this.)

Fade into shot of Paul as a mall cop at a West Orange, NJ mall, riding a sequeway, giving a ticket to an old man in a motorized cart. As the man attempts an escape, we see Paul grabbing the steering bar and being dragged along the mall floor.

Of course, within seconds of Paul saying he hopes nothing goes down; something goes down. It looks like a mall bank robbery gone bad. The mall is held hostage, real cops arrive, Paul is ordered to exit the building immediately, but hero that he is (Hey, the title is Paul Bart: Mall Cop), he tells them that he took an oath to protect the mall and its patrons.

Shot of one bad guy riding a motor bike over the second floor mall railing down to the first floor, another riding the escalator railing down, and Paul confronting two bad guys and wiping his eyes. A real cop outside says: Is he crying?

Things gets worse as Paul realizes he’s been trained to do nothing. However, through dumb luck, he knocks out one bad guy; then gets a tiny scratch which he covers with a kid’s bandage; and sneaks into the mall bank wending his way in a crouched position through the waiting lines ropes. (Remember Petet Falk and "serpentine"?)

Then Paul is picking up a balloon helium canister; fiddling with the mall Fog Machine, appearing out of that million colored ball activity for kids that a lot of mall have; and throwing himself unsuccessfully through the glass door. Finally, a fiery explosion rocks the mall. This is supposed to be funny?

We’re told that Paul Blart was the last thing that the crooks expected. We hear one say: Who is this guy.

Final shot (and completely out of sequence): Paul on the sequeway, probably on his way to work the first day, being chased by a small, white dog and saying: Dear God!

What I Expect From the Movie:

Absolutely nothing. It is a retread of a retread. This theme is so old, so lame, so stupid. Unless the actor playing Paul Bart has a huge following, I can’t believe anyone going to see this movie.

And, folks, it’s Number 1 at the box office.

But I think I have the explanation. I read this review to my husband and he was laughing so hard he was crying. It was definitely not my writing but his imagining the scenes I was describing.

He said: This is a role John Candy could play. The trouble is, Candy, and so many other comedic actors, did.