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Powerful

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The first must-see film of the year.

I'm amazed that this eighty-five million dollar movie received such negative reviews. I'll admit that it also amazes me that anyone would spend such a huge amount. The movie's actual U.S. gross was slightly less than half the negative cost, so the movie ended up returning its investors less than fifty cents in the dollar. I realize that some viewers would have problems with the script. It didn't worry me that the movie could be classed as a suspenseful, hard-action comedy-thriller. In my opinion, there's no reason why a movie can't imitate real life, but there's no doubt that the juxtaposition of comedy and thrills worried many viewers. It certainly didn't worry me! I could cite many, many famous books – just about everything written by Charles Dickens, for instance – in which comedy and suspense are similarly blended. As for the movie, in my opinion, all the actors deserve commendation, particularly the leads, Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro. Director Tom Dey did an absolutely magnificent job, and I thought the camera-work by Thomas Kloss was absolutely superb. Available on an excellent Warner Brothers DVD.

The thing that really got me was Eddie Murphy's character. I can't seem to wrap my mind around the concept of someone being a police officer as strictly a day job. When I was working person at New York State Crime Victims Board I had to deal with all kinds of cops and they ran the gamut between the really dedicated and some real slugs, but I can't think of one who thought that this was just something I do until I get my career going in an area far afield. I mean, can you really see Eddie Murphy or anyone else going through the rigors of the real Police Academy, not the screen version, just to get a day job?Anyway DeNiro is your basic hard working detective who's on the trail of a major gun dealer. He's undercover and Murphy is part of his backup. So what does the showboating Murphy do, he calls a reality based TV series like COPS to film the action. So DeNiro's bust gets blown sky high, but the producer of the show gets some good footage of Murphy and DeNiro and decides on a new reality based television series. So these unwilling partners get joined and try to continue working DeNiro's case with all the TV cameras around.Eddie Murphy's a funny guy, I loved him in Beverly Hills Cop and in the Doctor Doolittle movies, but he's done better things than Showtime and Robert DeNiro certainly has.

This movie is unfunny, but it's unfunny in a weird way. It's not like it's one failed gag after the other, it's just that most of the time they don't even seem to be going for one. A lot of scenes in this movie seem very straight-forward with no comic intent whatsoever, so the thing looks more like a fluffy crime thriller than a hilarious comedy. With that said though: it's still a really terrible fluffy crime thriller. Everything is horrendously clichéd, right down to the eccentric untouchable foreign villain. None of this stuff is new, everything has been done so many times before. The only difference here is that Robert de Niro is now on board, which somehow makes things even worse, especially since he has no chemistry whatsoever with Eddie Murphy. This was kind of a chore to watch really, don't know why I bothered since you know the ending just by reading the plot summary. Oh well, at least the William Shatner cameo was good.

"I have an amazing idea! Let's put DeNiro and Murphy in a movie together, they're so... different from one another! It can be like a buddy movie cop flick, only we'll make it sort of be about a fictional reality show so absurdly dangerous and reckless that it's still a year or two away from someone actually making it." "Should we write any material for this?" "...what?" "You know, jokes, gags... won't we need...?" "Nah, the tension and awkwardness between them will pass for comedy. Also, we'll throw in William Shatner in an embarrassing and useless cameo. The dialog won't have to be special, and we can reuse bits that were tired and dull the first time the audience saw them. Now, who should direct it? What about that Chan/Wilson project dude?" "Isn't he inexperienced?" "Was it profitable?" "...I think so..." "Hire him immediately; something this brilliant doesn't need talent, and maybe we'll save money by using him. We don't even have to have the characters' actions make sense; people don't want to see credibility in these, they want to laugh at things that don't make sense." "Let's at least add decent music here and there, keep the pace reasonable, and make sure the action is pretty cool, just to make it tolerable." "What do you mean, who wouldn't love this?" I recommend this solely to the biggest fans of Eddie. 6/10