I don’t watch TV, so I was kind of surprised by how totally cute the relatively svelte Kevin James was in Chuck and Larry. I kind of like the schlub type, to an extent. Then this movie promised James with a mustache and in a uniform, so when I was recovering from foot surgery and wanted to see something light n’ stupid, to this film I went. I was, however, unprepared for just how very light n’ stupid it was.
We begin with Blart doing pretty well on the test to join the New Jersey police force, which is his dream, but failing at the last moment as he is hypoglycemic, and suddenly falls asleep. He lives with his mother and daughter from his marriage to a Hispanic woman, who married him only to gain citizenship, and left him the second she got it. His mother and daughter encourage him to join an internet dating site, because his life is empty without romance. He is very excited about the pie his mom made for him, and slathers it in peanut butter before eating it. I suspect that some of this was intended to be humorous in some way.
At the mall he rides around on Segway and displays how very seriously he takes his job, portrayed throughout as absolutely pathetic, as he is disrespected by mall employees, customers, and his fellow guards. The humiliation he endures, for how seriously he takes his job and his weight, is unrelenting for the film’s first half hour—during which the plot is going NOWHERE—and kind of crosses the line into outright cruelty for me. Hey, why not have somebody piss on him? Why not have him slip, because he’s fat, and fall face first, mouth open, into a steaming pile of turds? That would be REALLY funny!
Meanwhile he’s smitten with this vacuous blonde, Amy, who works at a kiosk in the mall selling hair extensions. She is polite, but seems to have very little interest in him, but you know, fat people are pathetic and desperate for affection of any kind, so Paul is happy to suffer any indignity for the slightest bit of attention from this woman. She is, by the way, skinny as a rail, because as you know, it is NOT POSSIBLE for ANYONE, even an overweight man, to find an overweight woman attractive. Sorry, not possible! There is an overlong, totally unfunny, and flat-out dumb sequence where Paul gets drunk and makes a fool of himself at a karaoke bar. God, if only someone had puked on him, it would be comedy gold!
Finally the “plot” kicks in, where the security trainee Paul has been working with turns out to be the mastermind of a criminal operation to steal credit card numbers from the mall’s machines. Oh, I guess I shouldn’t have told you who the mastermind was, because it’s SUCH a surprise. Then the movie becomes a kind of Die Hard spoof as Blart inadvertently takes down the bad guys one by one and saves the mall.
This is where I expected Blart would redeem himself, and use his smarts to outwit the intruders, but sadly he remains as dunderheaded as ever, and most of his capturing of the villains is pure blundering that just happens to work out. The movie specifically goes out of its way to do this, in one scene having Blart momentarily disable an opponent by throwing something in his eyes, but then standing there like a fool, unable to take advantage of the situation. It’s kind of hard to get behind the redemption of this foolish schlub when he saves the day almost purely by accident, and is just as much a schulb by the end as he was at the beginning. And it starts to bring up questions such as “Why did I want to see this movie in the first place?”
One also ends the movie, in which [spoiler!] Blart ends up getting the girl at the end, wishing one could step on the screen and advise her to thank him politely, but decline any further contact. He even declines his dream job on the New Jersey police force to retain his job at the mall! Ladies, step away from the loser.
All of this is accompanied by phony uplift and an illusory sense that all is now right with the world, although nothing has really changed. Blart’s relationship with Amy is also a bit uncomfortable on all sides. Mostly for the aforementioned fact that the film positions Blart as a great guy that struggles with his weight, but is not nearly so generous to women. No, women must still be skinny and gorgeous, if they are to be attractive at all. And since Amy is such a pretty vacuum, the implication is that Blart likes mainly because she's beautiful and thin, which is apparently all you need in a woman. Maybe Amy really sees past Blart's weight to his true soul and loves him for who he really is, but the reality is far less likely, making it seem a little distastefully disingenuous to make it seem like she’s just delighted to run off with Blart at the end. Overweight people, the movie says, simply cannot find other overweight people attractive. This is of course on top of all the ribbing the movie has made on Blart’s weight. It’s the Shallow Hal of the new decade.
Anyway, not really worth expending this much effort on. The movie is admirably less violent than it could have been [perhaps helping to explain the large numbers of kids in the audience. Those kids will learn that fat people are intrinsically funny, and that overweight men can be attractive, but overweight women cannot. Not really that funny and leaving you with the feeling that you just paid $12 to watch a long sitcom, this one is best left to history.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
I wouldn’t, unless you have a lot of time to kill.
