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Showtime
**1/2
Cinema Releases - May 3, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 95
minutes. Directed by Tom Dey. Written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, Keith
Sharon; from a story by Jorge Saralegui. Starring Robert De Niro, Eddie Murphy,
Rene Russo, Pedro Damian, Dante Beze, Frankie Faison, William Shatner, Drena
De Niro.
"Showtime" stars Robert De Niro
and Eddie Murphy as two Los Angeles cops who keep stepping on each other's
toes -- De Niro is an efficient sergeant trying to organise complicated drug
busts, Murphy is a doofus patrolman who keeps getting in De Niro's way through
unfortunate coincidences. Into the plot comes a tabloid producer played by
Rene Russo, who decides that these two should be paired up for a reality
TV show.
Of course the big captain goes along with this
for some silly reason, and leaves the two guys to bite heads -- De Niro is
a tight-lipped tough guy who doesn't want any part of pussy Hollywood games,
while Murphy wants to be a star so badly that he springs into weepy speeches
in everyday conversation and tries to turn the end of every sentence into
a catchphrase.
These are obvious comic roles, but De Niro and
Murphy are great actors, and it's interesting how instead of merely bugging
his partner, each man has fundamental disrespect for the way the other approaches
his job. De Niro thinks Murphy is a joke of a cop, fooling around in a way
that's likely to get someone hurt. Murphy is one of those shallowly
happy-go-lucky twits who just can't understand why so many people are grumpy
all the time.
The first hour of "Showtime" is broad and silly,
but amusingly satirical. There is witty, contemporary dialogue (a studio
exec looks at his office computer and moans, "I just got outbid for this
'A-Team' lunchbox on eBay!"), and such features as a cameo appearance by
Johnnie Cochran, who sits with a client in police custody and informs the
cops, "If he don't talk, we walk!" The cast is fun to watch, and I like how
the TV producers keep saying they're going to keep their show real as they
rip apart locations to suit the camera.
The last third, however, descends into unapologetic
cliché. "I've never caused a chain reaction car pile-up, I've never
been chewed out by my boss for being a loose cannon," says De Niro in the
opening scene, and yet the movie does turn into a string of action set pieces
and gun-and-badge scenes. "Showtime" makes a joke out of car chases for an
hour and then gives us half an hour of car chases, and it's not irony, it's
laziness. This is the kind of movie best watched on television, where you
can glance at the good bits and ignore the junk.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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