I'd rather go shopping on Black Friday

By Adam Tobias of the Daily Times staff
Friday, January 16, 2009 12:09 PM CST

This photo provided by Sony Pictures shows Kevin James in a scene from “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”

As a movie critic who in most cases is considered a mature adult, one of the hardest things about my job is critiquing a film that is aimed solely at children.

I know we would all like to think we will stay young at heart forever, but the harsh reality is just about everything changes as we grow older, including our taste in films and what we perceive as funny.

What I enjoyed 20 years ago will not necessarily get the same reaction from me today, so whenever I sit down in a theater to watch a children's movie I try to get into the mindset of a little whippersnapper so I can at least somewhat relate to the material.

But even if I decided to jump into a time-traveling phone booth with Bill and Ted and go back to a point in my life when I couldn't go a day without getting grass stains on my pants or wiping my nose with my sleeve, I'd be willing to bet everything I own that I would still loathe the dismal and lousy "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," a PG-rated comedy written, produced and starring Kevin James.

To say "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" is easily one of the worst films of the year, or the decade for that matter, would be putting it lightly. I won't deny that I have laughed more than a few times at James' antics on his television show "King of Queens," but as the title character in "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" he is relegated to a bungling one-trick pony whose only trick is about as funny as poverty or disease.

ADVERTISEMENT

Unfit and grossly overweight, Paul Blart longs to become an officer with the New Jersey State Police, but he constantly fails the department's training exam because of a condition that causes his body to shut down whenever he doesn't have enough sugar in his blood.

He may receive comfort at home from his loving mother and daughter, but his heart remains forever broken thanks to his illegal alien wife hightailing it out of town right after she attained citizenship. Paul is so miserable he can't resist feeling hesitant about joining an online dating site, and smothering his dessert pie with peanut butter seems to be one of the only things that will make the pain go away.

To help compensate for his inability to get a job with the police department, Paul works at a local mall as a security guard, a profession he takes way too seriously. Although he isn't allowed to carry a weapon and his fellow guards would rather take naps than work, Paul takes pride in zipping across the mall in his Segway Personal Transporter and enforcing the law to the fullest extent possible.

And when Paul isn't breaking up fights in Victoria's Secret or issuing tickets to elderly customers driving too fast in their motorized shopping carts, he's trying to catch the eye of Amy, a small business owner who sells clip-on hair extensions from a kiosk called Unbeweaveable.

As you can hopefully tell, Paul's days spent roaming around the shopping center are fairly uneventful, but that all changes when a bunch of skateboarders, BMX riders and free runners take over the mall on Black Friday to steal credit card information from the most lucrative stores.

Paul is given the opportunity to run away unharmed before any of the armed thieves know he is there, but when he realizes Amy is still in danger he goes back into harm's way and vows to fulfill the sworn oath he took to protect the mall and all inside it.

I probably don't have to tell you this if you have seen any of the previews for "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," but basically all of the film's lowbrow comedy involves James crashing into things or looking completely inept while trying to thwart the plans of the big-scale shoplifters.

Sorry, but I just don't see any humor at all in James riding his Segway into a parked minivan or over a dog, running into and bouncing off a glass door, falling out of a broken air vent or attempting to slide on the floor to hide behind a mall sign, only to come up a couple feet short and then skidding the rest of the way. There are only a select few who are able to turn physical comedy into an art form, and with "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" James has shown that he is definitely not one of them.

Having viewed a number of advertisements and trailers before I saw the actual movie, I was able to brace myself for James' goofy performance that is the very definition of juvenile, but there is nothing that could've prepared me for the downright horrendous acting from Keir O'Donnell, who plays the leader of gang that overtakes the mall. (You might remember him as the weird brother of Rachel McAdams and Isla Fisher in "Wedding Crashers.")

It is impossible for me to tell if O'Donnell is actually pouring his heart into the role or over-acting on purpose, but it really doesn't matter what angle he is going for because he's so distractingly bad that you'll find yourself laughing at his character for all the wrong reasons.

But in the end, the majority of blame for this terrible abomination of a film should fall squarely on the shoulders of James, who came up with the idea for the clumsy and portly rent-a-cop after having a discussion with Adam Sandler. "I just love this guy," James says of Paul Blart in the movie's production notes.

For the sake of humanity I hope and pray that barely anyone else shares his affection.

1 star (out of 5)

Comments can be directed to Adam at adamt@wdtimes.com.

Next week: "The Wrestler."