Paul Blart: Mall Cop

 A Partially Educated Review of Paul Blart: Mall Cop

In which a film feels the need to provide constant reminders that Kevin James is overweight

Cast

Kevin James – Paul Blart

Jayma Mays - Amy

Keir O'Donnell - Veck

Bobby Cannavale – Commander Kent

Stephen Rannazzisi - Stuart

Shirley Knight - Mom

Adhir Kalyan - Pahud

Peter Gerety – Chief Brooks

Adam Ferrara – Sergeant Howard

Gary Valentine – Karaoke Singer

Raini Rodriguez - Maya

Jamal Mixon - Leon

Directed by Steve Carr

Written by Kevin James & Nick Bakay

 Picture the scene. The hero of a film is riding through a mall on some kind of weird electronic-scootery thing, having already been set up as a pathetic schlub. He spies the girl of his dreams and finds himself unable to stop staring at her. As she notices him and smiles, he finds himself even more entranced, due to the possibility that she may have just, in some way, positively received his affections. Will he:

a) Continue on his way, feeling a great sense of self-worth at the girls acknowledgement.

b) Gracefully glide over to her on the scooter, dismount and engage her in friendly conversation.

c) Ride by the girl and masterfully sweep her into his arms as the two ride off into the sunset while Up Where We Belong plays over the tannoy.

d) Fail to notice that he is headed straight for a kiosk and proceed to crash into it.

The answer will be revealed at the end of this review, so take your time. You never know, it may not be as obvious as you think. After all, this is a film produced by Adam Sandler and we all know how unpredictable he likes to keep things.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop stars Kevin James (in his first big solo starring role) as the titular Blart. Suffering from "hilarious" issues with hypoglycemia, Blart has failed to achieve his dreams of joining the police and has had to settle for running the aisles of his local mall on security detail. When the mall is taken over by a group of, what can only be described as, "extreme sports thieves", Blart finds himself as...

...Wait for it...

...THE ONLY MAN WHO CAN STOP THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm sure it will come as a surprise to no one that Paul Blart isn't good. To it's credit, it's not quite sitting amongst the true disasters of Sandler's career. I'd sooner sit through this again than the likes of Jack And Jill, You Don't Mess With The Zohan and Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, still very much his three most skin-crawlingly vile efforts. In the interests of full disclosure though, I should also note that I am open to the possibilities of Adam Sandler creating enjoyable films. Big Daddy, Click and (God help me) I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry all stand as films that I have quite enjoyed, but Paul Blart is sitting in a somewhat curious position. It's the only example of Sandler's productions I can think of where my feelings are of complete and total indifference.

I say this, despite the fact that there is so much to dislike about it. Chief of them all is Blart himself. He is the pathetic schlub mentioned earlier, but not in a way where you feel sorry for him because the script completely mishandles him. It seems perfectly understandable when other characters ensure they can avoid any and all association with him, even when those characters aren't particularly likeable themselves. Within the first few scenes of the film we see him bully a man in a wheelchair because he's been going too fast in it. This would maybe have worked, except the old man has blatantly not been going all that fast, meaning that your sympathies are going to lie with him, rather than Blart. As he drives off, dragging Blart behind him, you may find yourself remembering that Blart earlier committed the unforgivable act of running over a dog and start willing the old man to stick the gear into reverse and repay the favour. We then arrive at the "staring at the girl of his dreams" scene and this is just as badly handled. Instead of us feeling that he deserves her attention, it feels uncomfortable, edging Blart closer to stalker territory. While he longs for the commitment of a relationship, it slowly begins to look like commitment of the padded cell variety would be a better option.

It doesn't stop there. Blart's over-inflated sense of authority makes him intensely dislikeable. His ideas are so far above his station that he makes your average McDonald's manager look humble. The other issue with this is who it turns into the most likeable character. I'm going to try and avoid spoilers here, but there may be minor ones. If you care, don't read the rest of this paragraph. The trailer goes a long way towards not revealing who the bad guy is, which is commendable as it's revealed within the first half hour anyway and it's not uncommon for the final scene to appear in trailers nowadays. Nonetheless, I will acknowledge the effort by not stating the actor's name. Suffice to say, until the bad guy is revealed he is the character you're most likely to warm to, coming off as the only one who is vaguely human. This is a problem for two reasons: the first is that when he does turn bad, you're left with absolutely no one to sympathize with, as the film has done a terrible job of actually making you like anyone else. The second is that as far as villainous performances go, he's awful. It's like he's read Bad Guy Acting for Idiots and then decided that Gary Busey's a good template to adopt. He's even missed that mark by a distance. All sneer and no idea, his threats to shoot hostages seem idle for the duration and, even when he reaches his villainous peak, he's still coming off less like Alan Rickman and much more like Timothy Olyphant.

This film really is a Kevin James vehicle, but the supporting cast should at least get a mention. Jayma Mays comes off best. She plays the role to a perfectly acceptable standard and seems fairly happy to be there. When you consider that her career also contains Epic Movie and both of The Smurfs films, that probably explains why. Elsewhere, Allen Covert continues to mourn the fact that he's no longer Adam Sandler's favourite stooge and has been shunted off to the smaller films in favour of Nick "Comedic Antichrist" Swardsson and Jackie Sandler also makes an appearance, because Adam was too busy making Funny People and she's only allowed to appear in the bad films. Then there's Peter Gerety, providing a superb masterclass in awful comic timing.

Which leads us to the most important aspect of comedy: the jokes. To be fair to Paul Blart, there's a few decent ones, but I'm emphasizing the few. Out of the two best jokes, one of them's in the trailer and the other one I can't actually remember, I just know that I laughed twice. Elsewhere though, you have jokes that were done better elsewhere (comedy karaoke singer) and a grotesque overabundance of fat jokes. We get it. Kevin James is portly. The issue is that a single fat joke isn't funny. One a minute is even worse. Then, speaking of unnecessary devices, Paul Blart has a plot twist. It is probably the most inane plot twist going, although it wouldn't surprise me if there's a worse one in horror. Literally tacked on to the end, it attempts to justify the existence of a moderately pointless character and instead just makes him more pointless.

Here's the thing though, I was never actually bored during Paul Blart. I didn't sit there pleading for it to end. I just sat there thinking: this film merely exists. It never angered me, but it rarely entertained me. If that sounds like damning with faint praise, trust me, it's not. I have zero desire to praise this film. I'm just going to remember absolutely none of it.

Oh, and the answer to the earlier question is d). Bet you didn't see that one coming.

TWO out of five

Contains no evidence of Rob Schneider and Nick Swardsson, meaning that it is, at least in some respects, safe.