It was awwweeesssooommmeeee ! Freaking Funny . You must watch it , It is a must . You'll be laughing your ass off . It is a hilarious comedy from start to end is all i can say ;) Perfecto :D
A New Jersey rent-a-cop gets his moment to shine as the holidays approach and Santa's little helpers stage a coup at the local shopping mall in this comedy . Paul Blart is a single suburban dad attempting to make ends meet by working as a mall security guard. Paul takes his job very seriously; unfortunately the same can't be said for the shoppers he deals with on a daily basis. That all changes the day that Santa's little helpers shut down the mall and start taking hostages, including Paul's daughter and his main squeeze. Realizing that no one knows the mall better than the man who's paid to guard it, Paul mounts his Segway and speeds to the rescue .Reviews :
Paul Blart: Mall Cop is as sticky and gooey as a Cinnabon cinnamon roll, a snack the movie's title character has no doubt sampled once or twice over the years during his shift. A high-concept mash-up of Die Hard and Kung Fu Panda, Blart gives sitcom star Kevin James a showcase for broad-comedy pratfalls, providing him 87 minutes to plop, flop and crash into things, highlights of which have been playing nonstop on Nickelodeon for the last two weeks.
The targeted tween audience will lap up James' antics, but for the rest of us, Blart is just empty calories. The genial James has an appealing everyman quality, but the movie, written by James and his "King of Queens" writing partner Nick Bakay and directed by journeyman Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care), too often settles for easy, lazy jokes, most of which revolve around either food or running into stuff.
Blart lives in New Jersey with his mother (Shirley Knight) and daughter (Raini Rodriguez), covering the loneliness of his existence by slathering peanut butter on his nightly slice of pie. "Peanut butter . . . it fills the cracks of the heart," Blart says between bites.
Blart does gain a measure of fulfillment from his job at a West Orange, N.J., mall, where he scoots nimbly around on a Segway (the film gets nice mileage capturing James' dexterity on the two-wheeler), going about his sworn duty to "detect, deter, observe and report." That he has no real authority is an idea the filmmakers try to exploit, but the best scenario they can imagine involves Blart wrestling a heavyset woman in a lingerie store.
The movie's main action involves Black Friday, an elaborate robbery scheme, a hostage scenario, criminals played by actual X Games athletes and a shot at redemption for our hero. There's also a love story between Blart and a doe-eyed kiosk saleswoman (Jayma Mays), a good egg who intuits that somewhere beneath the mall cop's doughy exterior beats the heart of a champion. And not just because he won the nacho-eating contest, either.
Similarly, underneath all the cartoonish mall mayhem and silly slapstick lies a comedy that aspires to be the sort of gentle crowd-pleaser John Hughes used to make. Trouble is, the filmmakers are unwilling to sacrifice any of James' rolling-and-tumbling time to beef up Blart's history or his relationship with his daughter. Even a minimal adjustment could have made the movie's late-in-the-game, heartstrings-tugging peril more palatable.
Then again, maybe we should be thankful for the tone as is. The movie's few stabs at emotion involve music cues using Barry Manilow's "Weekend in New England" and Survivor's "I Can't Hold Back." The Manilow song might -- repeat, might -- be a stab at irony, but it should be noted that Adam Sandler, a longtime advocate of the simple pleasures of Styx, mentored James and produced Blart. Don't think he doesn't own a copy of Survivor's greatest hits.
-Glen Whipp
After wisely affixing himself to Will Smith (Hitched) and Adam Sandler (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry), Kevin James rides solo in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, an almost shockingly amateurish one-note-joke comedy on which the star also shares writing and producing credit. Seemingly designed to facilitate mall marketing and retail tie-ins, the movie itself has only one consistent strategy -- namely, capitalizing on James' adeptness at hurling his sizable bulk around. It is, pardon the expression, an extremely slim approach, which should yield quickly diminishing returns after a more solid opening than most actual malls are seeing in this economy.
Having successfully made the comic-to-actor transition on the sitcom "The King of Queens," James possesses an inherent sweetness and an amiable-lug quality. Along with his penchant for pratfalls, there are hints of the late Jackie Gleason in him -- though with efforts like Mall Cop, any similarities will pretty much end there.
Directed by Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care), the movie is so shoddily edited that there are glaring gaps in the action, including a chase sequence that begins within the mall and suddenly, inexplicably, winds up on the roof. The same goes for a left-field twist involving the protagonist's daughter, just to name a few of the "Huh?" moments, as if somebody decided trimming the fat was the only way to make this food-court flotsam palatable.
The premise ostensibly hopes to spoof Die Hard, with rejected state trooper applicant-turned-security guard Paul Blart (James) as the "man on the inside," forced to defend a New Jersey mall after high-tech thieves have seized control. While Paul tools around on a Segway, the thieves navigate the shopping center on skateboards for no particular reason other than the fact that 12-year-olds -- who clearly represent the target audience of this PG-rated endeavor -- tend to like them.
A divorced dad who takes the expression "comfort food" to extremes that include slathering peanut butter on pie, Paul has set his eye on Amy (Jayma Mays, carving out an odd niche as the object of nerd affection, having played a similar role on "Heroes"), who staffs one of the mall kiosks. Naturally, she's among the hostages taken, prompting Paul to seek creative ways to thwart the bad guys, who, fortunately, appear to have guns only when they have no opportunity to shoot at him.
Although produced by Sandler's company, the project appears to have been made on a budget of the big-box-store variety. Still, even given the movie's modest ambitions, it's surprising to see a studio release in which details like continuity and coherence are such a conspicuous afterthought.
James still has potential as the kind of unorthodox leading man who resembles a sizable portion of America, and he has mastered a hangdog expression that makes him easy to root for. Enduring Mall Cop, though, only brings to mind the depressing scenario currently playing out in malls all over: Even with cut-rate goods at discount prices, the answer's no sale.
- Brian Lowry
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