Paul Blart: Mall Cop

James portrays the title’s security
guard, a bicycle-helmeted by-the-booker who tools around on his Segway
to protect the customers and workers of a New Jersey mall that looks
like one of those Congel-esque Destiny-ations. Adhering to the credo of
“Detect. Deter. Observe. Report,” Blart treats his occupation with
unswerving dedication, which is more than can be said about his fellow
guards, who easily live up to the rent-a-cop stereotype.

James’ script, co-written with Nick
Bakay, gives the Blart character plenty to work with, like making him a
hefty hypoglycemic single dad with a Latino teen daughter (Raini
Rodriguez) who still lives with his mom (Shirley Knight, ageless at
72). And taking a cue from his long-running TV series The King of Queens,
driven by one of those only-on-the-boob-tube premises in which a
blue-collar shlub is hooked up with a gorgeous spouse (this reliable
formula offers a through-line from The Honeymooners to According to Jim),
James’ Blart attempts to woo a kiosk cutie (Jayma Mays) in between
dealing with miscreants like a senior-citizen speedster on his scooter. 

James milks this one-joke idea about as
far as it can possibly go, with mock-macho dialogue to spare (“This
isn’t my first rodeo!”) and bursts of strenuous slapstick such as
Blart’s margaritas-fueled meltdown. And while James is no Chaplin
during Blart’s romantic interludes, there’s an unforced sweetness more
reminiscent of Jackie Gleason’s Poor Soul. So it’s a good thing that at
the midway point a gang of free-running and skateboarding thieves break
into the mall to pilfer the Black Friday receipts, with Blart switched
into rescue mode to solve the crisis. Yes, it’s Hollywood’s umpteenth
riff on Die Hard, right down to the scene of Blart covertly pushing his girth through some department-store air ducts.

Although Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care)
is credited as director for his traffic-cop functions, he’s less of an
auteur on this project than actor/co-producer/co-writer James. And even
James is really just part of the packaging for this latest effort from
Happy Madison Productions, Adam Sandler’s moviemaking shingle and a
repository for 21st-century slob-comedy cinema. All of the expected
Sandler-esque components are in place, from lowbrow sight gags like
Blart’s sweatshirt displaying splotches of perspiration under his
“moobs,” to the unlikely casting of veteran performers such as Knight
(she joins a long list, including Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore, Kathy Bates in The Waterboy and Shirley Jones in Grandma’s Boy)
to the easy use of classic-rock musical cues, including Edgar Winter’s
“Frankenstein” and a high-on-pixie-stix Blart performing air-guitar
windmills for Kiss’ “Detroit Rock City.” The gag concerning a Barry
Manilow oldie, however, would have been funnier if a similar moment in
last summer’s Hellboy 2: The Golden Army didn’t get there first.

During the 1999 movie exhibitor confab
ShoWest in Las Vegas, the comedian introduced himself: “My name is Adam
Sandler. I’m not particularly smart. I’m not particularly talented. I’m
not particularly good-looking. And yet I am a multimillionaire.”
Sandler’s smarter than we think, now that Paul Blart: Mall Cop, at best an inoffensive programmer for kids, has emerged as Tinseltown’s most unlikely tentpole. 

Sony’s DVD release, unseen by these
peepers, includes a letterboxed (1.85:1 ratio) image, in which director
Carr’s perfunctory visuals should lose nothing in the translation,
along with a commentary track supplied by James and producer Todd
Garner, deleted scenes and plenty of vignettes devoted to the
free-runners and their take-it-to-the-extreme stunts. This Kevin James
epic is also available in an ultralight DVD case designed with 20
percent less plastic, which has led Sony’s Lexine Wong, senior
executive and vice president of worldwide marketing for the video
company, to comment, “By utilizing a more eco-friendly packaging,
launching with Paul Blart, Mall Cop, we hope to eliminate an
estimated 2 million pounds of annual carbon emissions in North America
alone by the end of the year.” No fat jokes, please.

—Bill DeLapp