FilmFemme

I struggled for a while, as to whether I should tag Paul Blart: Mall Cop with “comedy” or “horror.”  I won’t go in to the whys and hows that answer the way in which I ended up seeing this movie, suffice to say it has something to do with imitation Goldfish crackers, iPhone malfunctions and the Glendale Galleria.

Anyhow, as you might have guessed from the poster, the trailer, the colon in the title or the fact that it was number one at the box office in that most notorious of all dumping grounds that is January, Paul Blart: Mall Cop was truly awful.  That picture to the left?  That is the joke.  Fat Guy on Segway.  That IS the movie.

Kevin “King of Queens” James play Paul Blart: Mall Cop.  He wants to be a state trooper (in New Jersey, natch), but due to his hypoglycemia, he has never been able to pass the obstacle course.  Instead, he lives with his mother and overweight daughter and cruises around a Jersey megamall on a Segway, lusting after the girl who works at the hari extension kiosk.  Paul Blart: Mall Cop’s mom and daughter are concerned that he has been alone for so long, since his ex-wife left him as soon as she got her green card (is this really a necessary fact?) so they sign him up for PerfectMatch.com.  This is indeed a real website, but they seem to have sunk their entire advertising budget into product placement.  That’s right, this is the same website through which the main characters meet in 2005′s Must Love Dogs.  Though I happen to know a number of people who are no strangers to the online dating scene, I have never met anyone that has used PerfectMatch.com.  Match.com, OKCupid, even eHarmony.  Perhaps their marketing buys are not really working.  But I digress.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop is Segwaying through his days at the mall, training a new guard, flirting with Amy the wig girl (Jayma Mays, who with her big innocent eyes and bewildered look is a dead ringer for Anna Faris – but without the part where she is funny) and being tormented by a pen salesman when crisis strikes.  It seems the new guard is actually a criminal mastermind who, along with his BMX bike riding and skateboarding underlings, has planned to rob the mall on “Black Friday” (weird that the movie came out right *after* Christmas, then).  So Amy is taken hostage and Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the only one left inside the mall to save her.  Chaos and non-hilarity ensues.

I have nothing against wacky comedies.  I have nothing against Kevin James or Anna Faris lookalikes or fat little kids or internet dating.  I guess I have an aversion to Mall Cops (cops in general) but this movie was not funny.  It was stupid.  It was predictable.  It had inexplicable skateboarding in improbable consequences to getting drunk (karaoke?  yes.  tattoos? no!) And the hot chick falls in love with the fat sweaty guy.

Please don’t give this movie your money.  Go ahead and send it to me and I will put it good use & then send you pictures that will make you laugh a lot more than Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

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