Review: Showtime

Do they think we're so stupid that we are going to take media/celebrity ethics lectures from a movie made and owned by AOL/Time-Warner? (Of course they do.) Add Showtime to that long list of movies that could have so easily been better. This film is confused: On the one hand, it wants to be a movie about media obsession with celebrity and violence, and also a spoof of vigilante and cop movies and a dis on reality shows. It also wants to rag on its two stars, Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy. And then, inexplicably, it wants to be a cop movie, crammed with chases, fistfights, machine-gun blasts, car crack-ups, spent shells, fires and explosions. You can't have it every which way, guys. The end result is a mish-mash film that is sometimes funny -- especially when Murphy and DeNiro are going at one another -- but is mostly boring and lame. It always comes down to the writing, doesn't it?

The best way to describe this movie is good-natured. Murpy, DeNiro, Rene Russo, William Shatner and Mos Def all know what they're doing, but the script doesn't really give them much worth doing. The rather tired premise is the pairing of a tough-guy detective (DeNiro, obviously) with the wise-ass, media savvy urban black cop (Murphy), both enthusiastically manipulated by the stop-at-nothing, no-holds barred and exploitive producer (Russo). The LAPD, seeking better publicity than it's been getting the last couple of years, orders the two to participate in a cop-reality-show called Showtime. Murphy's character, who is dying to be in the movies, is thrilled, hamming it up for the cameras. He essentially plays his character in Beverly Hills Cop, which is funny enough, but a bit tired. DeNiro, a hard-ass from the old school, is ethical, horrified and reluctant to participate. While Murphy's character sees him as a dinosaur, DeNiro's sees his young partner as an incompetent hotdog.

In fact, DeNiro seems to have made a career (Analyze This, and most recently Meet the Parents), out of laughing at his own tough-guy persona, which is really a shame. He hasn't had a serious role in a few years, and this spoofing of spoofs of spoofs is getting old. In the movie, the two don't like one another, at least at first, but -- shock of shocks -- learn to deal with it, as the bad guys (a drug dealer and his gang) get their hands on shockingly lethal hand-tooled shotguns with uranium-tipped shells that can level whole buildings in just a few seconds. The movie is meant to be a satire -- Johnnie Cochran's appearance is a hoot, and so are the Jackie-Chan style outtakes at the end -- but for a satire to work, the story has to be funny and/or biting. This movie, on the whole, is neither. The plot is too stupid to carry any freight, even these talented actors. And the film says nothing about our media or celebrity culture that hasn't been said a zillion times, usually better.

The movie does have its entertaining moments, most of them clustered at the beginning and end, around all of the car chases and explosions, but you may leave Showtime thinking it's time for Eddie Murphy to find a role where he can be funnier, and for DeNiro to stop laughing at himself and start being himself again. And enough media/celebrity narcissism. We get it.

Comments

films

[56ker]

Well if this is the best Hollywood can come up with I'll stay at home. Mind you it's been months since any new film seemed good enough to actually go and see. I suppose these are the sorts of films we get outside of the holiday season - when most people have other things to do with their time.

De Niro's roles

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks that his part in The Score was no spoof. Or in that movie (I forget the title) in which he plays a homophobic guy felled by a stroke. They are both recent movies.

sometimes a chair is just a chair

[RN]

Jon, not every movie is intended as message or a lecture about some issue. seems you like to think every movie contains one, but it's more like you're reading into something that's just not there.

btw, please stop harping on ethics when you still haven't answered your "message from kabul" hoax.

For the writer's-eye-view

[Scareduck]

go here. The problem with this movie is the usual story -- too many cooks in the kitchen. But that's not unusual; a friend who works for a major studio once told me that, on one feature he was working, the filming process looked something like

• Film five minutes of material, six different ways.
• Record test audience's reaction to all six sequences.
• Discard lowest-rated pieces.
• Lather, rinse, repeat until you have 120 minutes of material.

There are a lot of people in the "industry", especially the non-acting union-represented trades, who are worried about production flight, and rightfully so. A lot of shooting has migrated to Canada over the last few years because of tax subsidies film and TV production receives in the Great White North. The real reason Hollywood is exporting jobs to Canada is that the producers can make big, expensive mistakes for far less. (However, this is changing, I'm to understand: in the first place, Canadians are sick of paying gazigabucks for film subsidy; and in the second place, California's state legislature has passed special tax cuts for film industry types so they can fuck up more cheaply in state. I love how everyone in Hollywood is a liberal until it comes time to pay the rent.) Nobody in Hollywood knows how to make a movie. Everybody wants to be seen having a part -- hence the proliferation of credited producer and assistant producer roles. The bureaucracy beggars the lexicon. As a result, only "safe" movies ever get made, "safe" being defined as "will a teen-age boy go see it?" The consistent exceptions, unsurprisingly, seem to be coming from Pixar, which is far away from Hollywood's stinking tarpits.

comes down to story, not writing

[Infonaut]

I just saw Showtime yesterday, and I enjoyed it for what it was: a matinee movie devoid of any real meaning. It took easy shots at reality TV and cop movies, but then slid back into standard Hollywood fare when there were no more shots to take.

The screenplay followed the plan of the movie - at least, the plan as envisioned by the studio. Do you honestly think that the studio said, "Hmm.. we need to make a movie that will use satire and comedy to blow the doors on the wicked exploitation and stupidity of cop movies and reality TV?"

Of course not - just like most comedy, they took some of the more ludicrous aspects of our society and poked fun at them, while advancing a story built around two likeable characters.

That's it. No message. Jon, you went in with the expectation that the movie would be something deeper, but I have to scratch my head - what in the previews or in your previous experience with Hollywood movies made you think you'd be seeing a ringing expose of The Truth?

Research Katz, Research

[0xA]

Okay guys this is my very first bash Katz post so forgive me if I'm not quite as polished as I could be.

In fact, DeNiro seems to have made a career (Analyze This, and most recently Meet the Parents), out of laughing at his own tough-guy persona, which is really a shame. He hasn't had a serious role in a few years, and this spoofing of spoofs of spoofs is getting old.

Katz you Jackass. You do realize that after Meet the Parents De Niro made two not funny films, 15 Minutes (not so good) and The Score (excellent). Just before Analyze This he was in Ronin, Great Expectations and Jackie Brown.

Every time he was playing a variant of the tough guy he's famous for. He hasn't had a serious role in a while? Go rent The Score you idiot. Yeah the spoofing is a little silly and predictable, but it isn't all the man is doing with his career.

I like most of your articles, I think you contribute to this site in many ways and are an important part of it. Your tendency to make sweeping asinine statements with no factual basis is starting to annoying. It is devaluing your contribution by undermining your credibility. Try researching things occasionally.

A different perspective

[swillden]

My wife and I went to Showtime on Friday and walked out giggling.

On the one hand, it wants to be a movie about [blah, blah, blah] and also a [blah, blah, blah]. It also wants to [blah, blah, blah]. And then, inexplicably, it wants to [blah, blah, blah]. [...] And the film says nothing about our media or celebrity culture that [blah, blah, blah].

Who cares what the movie "wants" to be or say? I didn't go expecting an insightful deconstruction of the Hollywood ethos, I went for a couple of hours of chuckles, a few serious belly laughs and, overall, a bit of light-hearted entertainment. While I never had to worry about spewing Coke on the woman in front of me, I was quite satisfied with the experience and counted it as an evening and $14 well spent.

Re:Yeah...

[Accipiter]

It's like someone once said:

Reading Katz is like passing a really bad auto accident. You know you're going to be horrified if you look, but you look anyway.

I think that says it all.