Movie: Paul Blart: Mall Cop (Review)

Date: 2009.01.25 | Posted by Jeff | Category: Movies / TV / Books | Response: 1

Steve Carr’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop, starring King of Queens Kevin James and hottie Jayma Mays, comes off as a pretty funny movie in the trailer. Fair warning, it’s not.

The whole idea of this movie is that an overweight failure of a security guard is caught up in an organized crime in the mall and has to stop it on his own. Throw in a crush on a kiosk worker and low blood sugar and you have yourself a movie. Unfortunately, they forgot to include good writing with this story line, which leaves the movie with a hollow half-assed feel to it.

The acting itself really wasn’t that bad, but the characters just didn’t have enough substance to carry the movie. If they weren’t going to give us a hardcore decent fulfilling plot, at least give us some character background or slapstick humor. Given that these are the top two factors needed for a successful movie of these genre, it’s fair to say that the mark was missed on this feature.

All in all, Mall cop seems to fall short of being a comedy as I only found myself with one chuckle the entire course of the movie (which was also in the trailer, go figure). The only real entertaining thing that I found was that on an episode of King of Queens Kevin James was forced to shave his mustache because his wife said he “Looked like a motorcycle cop”. Oh how things repeat themselves.
Final score: 3/10 ‘Buy this from the dollar bin when it shows up at the dirt mall’.