Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

2 years ago

Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

IT IS YOUR OWN FAULT IF YOU ARE WATCHING THIS

by Chris Cantoni

In our post-9/11 world, Americans have long been clamoring for answers, an understanding of where we’ve come in the years hence. Unflinching and fearless, Paul Blart: Mall Cop examines the morality of authority and the public trust in a way few have dared.

None of that is true. Paul Blart, directed by Steve Carr and starring Kevin James, is a sad film. Not because it stars an overweight single dad living with his mom and shuffling himself through each day, dark and moody at home and hypertense at work in an effort to give meaning to his slowly dwindling existence. No, Paul Blart is a sad film because it lacks almost any semblance of original comedy.

It could be the collapse-inducing hypoglycemia, or Blart’s ex-wife being an illegal immigrant. Then again, it could be Blart trying to stop an old man in a rascal scooter or getting beat up by a fat woman. You see where I’m going. If you can picture any one of these “comic scenarios” and think it’s fresh, watch Paul Blart.

When the oversexed Indian-American teenager shows up with his thick accent, I’m too tired to be offended (Can Hollywood just retire the funny foreign accent? It hasn’t been funny since I was 13). Sure, I gave a half-hearted scoff, but it was more aimed at a movie that seems put together by a roomful of suits trying to guess what the least common denominator of Americans want to see (Sadly, they must have been right). Kevin James himself seems to wear an aura of inevitability, waiting for this desperately unfunny film to end already.

Paul Blart is safe in everything it does. Why risk new jokes when old ones have already been proven? Why tell a unique story when the audience can so easily guess this one ahead of time? The story itself isn’t exactly clear: a gang of X-Games enthusiasts (Really? This trope isn’t exhausted yet? Skateboarders, BMX bikers and yes, even Parkour, I wish I were joking) break into the mall on Black Friday to… steal the access numbers of the credit card machines of every store? Said numbers somehow being worth $30 million? Somehow? I’m not talking credit card numbers. I mean access numbers of machines that swipe credit cards. Essentially, VALUE-LESS NUMBERS. Do you understand what I’m saying here?

When Veck Sims (Veck?), a new security trainee, reveals himself to be the mastermind of this dastardly plot, he remarks, “surprised?” and it takes everything in me not to smash the screen and shout “No! I am not surprised, not by any moment of this movie!” Except, perhaps, that Blart is able to expertly remember every phone number he might ever need despite not having a cell phone until thirty minutes into the film.

Observe and Report, another mall cop comedy coming out earlier this year, was dark, gritty and somewhat offensive, everything Paul Blart is not. But if you put them next to each other, it becomes startlingly apparent how deranged and disturbed Blart’s life could spiral if not for the protective cocoon of family comedy.

They both have mall cops pathetically alone and living with their mothers. They both have a ditsy girl to whom the mall cop is inexplicably drawn. And they both involve an ill-equipped man attempting to fight crime vigilante style. Observe and Report shows us what a disturbed man like Paul Blart would be in the real world, while Paul Blart doesn’t show us anything we haven’t already seen.

Chris Cantoni is an aspiring screenwriter living in Los Angeles. He is currently wanted by mall cops everywhere, and tumbls here.