'Paul Blart: Mall Cop' - Fun For Security Guards and Civilians Alike!
Shortly into Paul Blart: Mall Cop, I was struck by a sudden realization that I wasn’t sure if the movie was making fun of all security guards or just the ones that take their jobs too seriously. In pondering that question, I realized that the fun-poking that the movie does could wreak devastating havoc on the rent-a-cop industry in the United States. Can you imagine the terror if it suddenly became cool for security guards to slack off on the job? I don’t even want to think about it.The next thing I did was mourn the sad fate of the Segway, which was introduced to the public back in 2001 and was intended (and many people believed it would) to completely redefine pedestrian traffic and even revolutionize the way we design modern American cities. It’s easy to have believed that, too. Merely a year into the 21st century, the realization that flying cars remain distantly in the future (or, more likely, forever limited to fiction) paves the way for a strong belief that the futuristic vision of 21st century Americans that we have been waiting for might be something as simple as this curious little vehicle on which Americans of the future must soon be zooming around on.
[caption id="attachment_19981" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Paul Blart expounds on the importance of safe mall driving."]
[/caption]8 years later, however, the Segway remains wildly over-priced and conspicuously absent from the general public. At most it’s a curious oddity occasionally glimpsed in public, popping up more often as a sight gag in movies like Paul Blart or Ron Howard’s brilliant television series “Arrested Development” than as an everyday means of transportation.
And it’s use on-screen is doing nothing to improve it’s public image! Paul Blart is a mall security guard who believes that his job is not only on par with a police officer, but even a member of the military. He zooms importantly around the mall on his Segway, pulling over senior citizens on electric wheelchairs and calling codes and status updates into his shoulder radio even as his superiors sit in the main security office teasing him for being so serious.
Paul is a lovable guy but the movie tries so hard to get us to laugh not only at his dead-serious attitude about his low-profile job but also at his weight and hypoglycemia issues that it becomes nearly impossible to accept his budding romance with a local hair-extensions salesgirl. Kevin James, of “King of Queens” fame, is a wonderful comedic actor who brings back fond memories of John Candy, but most of the movie hangs from him like a wet blanket.I do appreciate, however, that the movie attempts to get us to laugh without a single sex joke or body noise or any other such nonsense, and it’s not overflowing with pointless profanity like so many other low-brow comedies these days.
One day while closing up the video arcade, Blart decides to have a little fun with the games while the store is locked, providing a golden opportunity for the bad guys to swing into action and offering further proof of my long-standing theory that Guitar Hero and that Britney Spears Dance game might be somewhere near the source of all evil. This is the turning point in the movie, where it turns from a light-hearted romantic comedy and into a light-hearted romantic action movie.It's over-flowing with product-placement, but it also takes advantage of a lot of it. One of the best scenes in the movie takes place in the Rainforest Cafe where Blart has a battle with the bad guys that is right out of a Vietnam war movie.
[caption id="attachment_19984" align="alignright" width="300" caption="When Mall Traffic Stops Go Horribly Wrong!"]
[/caption]The action and romance are both thoroughly ridiculous, as are the bad guys who take over the mall (with an intricate plot to steal, I kid you not, credit card numbers) and then race around it on skateboards and BMX bikes, , but it’s important to realize that the movie is a fun romp around a barricaded mall, sort of like what you would get if you combined Dawn of the Dead, Die Hard, and Home Alone, and removed any possibilities of zombies or bloodshed. Home Alone, for example, was gorier than this movie.
And besides, it also features the funniest Indian accent since the 1986 classic Short Circuit. Peanut Blart and jelly!
The Bean-Meter!
Bean approves! But mostly he just loved that Indian guy. And he also loves Kevin James because he's always talking about food. Right now he won't offer any comments because he made me give him some peanut blart and jelly when he heard the Indian guy say it and he's been licking his chops frantically ever since. But he did have this to say about the action -
[caption id="attachment_19986" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Bean: "Yeah, but have you ever fired two cans of mace simultaneously whilst jumping through the air?""]
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