Rotten Tomatoes score: 33%
I really like Kevin James, and I always imagine that in real life he is exactly like his character in this movie. I like nice-guy heroes. Paul is neither preachy and saccharine nor nasty and sarcastic; he's just a genuinely decent guy. I think the negative response to this movie is probably in response to its silliness, but I'm not sure what else anybody expected from a movie called Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
This movie follows in the grand tradition begun by Die Hard in 1988 and continued in every subsequent action movie, action movie parody, and TV series. But in this case, instead of Bruce Willis, we get Kevin James as an overweight shopping mall security guard. (Or if you prefer, "security officer." There's actually a huge debate brewing in the industry about what the proper terminology is; I'm sure you've heard about it.)
Paul is a hopelessly dedicated shlemazel, the only person in the world who could take this job seriously. Though fat, he's remarkably athletic, but unfortunately his hypoglycemia has prevented him from passing the physical fitness exam to become a New Jersey state trooper. According to this movie's portrayal, hypoglycemia causes you to pass out instantaneously (and start snoring like a cartoon), with no prior warning signs, any time your blood sugar gets low.
For the first 20 minutes or so, we watch Paul go about his life and business in the days leading up to Black Friday. He shares his home with his mother and step-daughter (his ex-wife abandoned them both), and at work he endures the cruel heckling of an egomaniacal pen salesman while pining over Amy (Jayma Mays), who sells wigs at a mall kiosk. Amy is friendly to him, but Paul seems to put the kibosh on their relationship when he embarrasses himself after drinking what he thought was lemonade, but was really a margarita, at a gathering of mall employees at American Joe's.
On Black Friday he gets his chance to redeem himself. A team of criminals takes over the mall in the hopes of stealing credit card information from the stores' computers, and--à la Die Hard--they fail to realize that Paul is still inside the mall. For most of the movie, he proceeds to pick off the crooks one by one while closing in on the bank where the hostages, including Amy and Paul's daughter, are held.
The action scenes are funny and progressively absurd. For some reason, the bad guys move about the mall by some kind of bizarre Parkour, which is fun to watch but really weird. The dialogue repeatedly assures us that Paul never seriously injures the bad guys, so it's all in good fun, even though there is a preposterous scene where Paul causes tens of thousands of dollars of damage to the Rainforest Café. Anyway, these scenes are pretty funny, and in short order Paul has saved the day and won Amy's heart.
Family comedies seem to be hard to make, since they have to be nice and inoffensive, but then they run the risk of being sappy or lame. Well this movie is definitely lame, but it embraces that and makes it work. It never once resorts to gross-out jokes, and the cheesy feel-good plot comes across as innocent and genuine, not forced or cloying.
I recommend this movie with a slice of pie and peanut butter. It is sorely and severely
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