The lowest tier: Paul Blart: Mall Cop (2009)

Have you ever felt ashamed of yourself for watching a movie? Surely you have at some point. If not, then this is the perfect time for you to start - Paul Blart: Mall Cop. The title of the film just screams white trash, and we’re going to dive headfirst into it until we can no longer feel our faces.

Mall Cop is a run-of-the-mill comedy which is lazy, formulaic and predictable. The amount of fat jokes held within numbers in the twenties, but surprisingly there are no instances of toilet humour, making this a rather tame picture which would barely miss out on getting a G rating.

Our story starts with nobody’s favourite actor or comedian, Kevin James, as he trains for the police academy. To its credit this segment is mercifully short and inoffensive - unlike the Police Academy movies - and mainly serves to set up one joke. You know what that joke is? Blart falls asleep. That’s it. That’s the joke. If you didn’t laugh at that then you may want to back out now, because it’s only going to get worse.

Back at home, Blart is revealed to live with his mother and daughter, and that he is a pathetic loser who can’t get a girlfriend. Like usual in American cinema, being a single parent (especially a father) is shown to be completely undesirable, and even uncouth. Someone better get him a wife, because obviously this bozo can’t look after his daughter without a woman to help - we call this a reflection of social values. But enough of serious analysis; there are bad jokes to pull apart! Oh, look! Paul Blart is fat, so of course he eats peanut butter on dessert pastries.

So a bunch of uninteresting shit happens, including a set up for Blart’s hypoglycemia condition, which is always brought up, but never really factors in to the plot. Then, finally we get to Blart at work in the shopping centre where he rides a segway for no reason other than because it’s stupid and it can set up more jokes than if he just walked everywhere. Some actual story development starts happening here and it is up to Blart to help out the new trainee, Veck something. Obviously this involves getting up to crazy hi-jinks where the director can give us one of my most hated comedy tropes of all time - the cut-away reaction shot. In the cut-away reaction shot, the main agent of the gag is centred on as s/he does their thing, and every so often to accentuate the punchline (because of course a laugh track would be out of place in a feature film) there is a quick edit to a supporting character’s face making a suitable reaction to the agent’s activity. It’s a really noticable technique once you realise it’s there. In this scene, Blart must stop an old man roaring through the plaza on his scooter (there is no set up for this scene at all, by the way; it just comes and goes):

I’m sure by now you are rolling around on the floor laughing, but there’s even more to come, so hold on to your sides.

Blart finds Anna Faris smashed with Heather Graham and Katy Perry (which is an awesome combination, I’m not gonna lie) and he cartoonishly tries to impress her with his segway skills, and naturally it’s really embarrassing to sit through. They talk about shit for a while and they kind of bond I suppose, setting up the rest of the film.

Skipping forward a bit here because most of this is just boring and shit. Blart goes to meet the girl he just met, Amy, at some restaurant/cafe/bar place for some staff party or something; I’m not really clear on why this is happening. He meets up with her but Will Ferrel smashed with David Boreanaz gets in the way, saying that he is actually going out with Amy and then he acts like a douchebag for no reason other than because there needs to be some sort of antagonist because we’re now 25 minutes into the film and fucking nothing is happening. A bunch of unnecessary side characters are introduced here, including this fat black guy whom Blart has an eating contest with for… you guessed it, no reason. Half these jokes don’t even have any set up, they just sort of materialise out of the own stupidity of the lowest-tier-comedy megaverse.

Obviously just by looking at this picture you know that this scene must be hilarious. I love Veck’s face in the background there. It’s like he can’t believe how dumb this is, either.

After this brilliant piece of cinema gold Blart gets drunk and hilarity ensues when he falls out a window and other dumb things that no one would ever do when drunk. Of course, Amy isn’t too wrapped with this performance so it creates some animosity between them, but that’s okay because they will end up together in the end and she will be the mother that Blart’s daughter always deserved and fuck this is bad. This scene goes on forever and it’s really fucking cringeworthy, so let’s just carry on.

It’s now BLACK FRIDAY which is what they call the “biggest shopping day of the year” according to Mall Cops, so you just know that crazy stuff is going to happen. Blart tries to reconcile with Amy but she is rather reticent (for good reason), which discourages him and so he goes to meet two of the characters we JUST MET IN THE LAST SCENE. Now, I’m not sure why this annoys me so much, but the fat black guy and the bald Jewish guy whom we just met in the drunk scene turn up and hand Blart some of what we call ‘elixirs’. Without getting too overbearingly academic on you, what I mean by this is a kind of deus ex machina; items that will become useful later on in the quest, but don’t necessarily have an obvious use now. Think along the lines of adventure game logic, if you are in to video games.

In any case, Blart now has a cell phone and a bottle of hot sauce, and is feeling sad because Amy doesn’t like him. To cheer himself up he goes to the arcade, which is probably the most blatant product placement I’ve seen in a long time. Now, it’s one thing for it to be important to the story, but when a random guy just pops in and says “Maybe you’d like to play some VIDEO GAMES” then it’s just a little too obvious for my tastes. Regardless, Blart goes and plays some 'Rock Band’ TM on the 'Playstation 3’. While doing so, some robbers take over the mall and they capture a few hostages, namely Amy, the fat black guy and the Ferrel-Boreanaz guy. It is then revealed that Veck, the trainee, is the bad guy. But, he’s not just any bad guy… he is “their leader” (it doesn’t sound too much of a stupid quote on paper, but believe me “I am their leader” sounds fucking awful in a film).

Now the movie turns into Die Hard for some reason. Like… literally. Blart must run around the shopping centre on his own, with only having contact with the police who are outside. There are goons running about trying to kill him (who are all named after reindeer which is really goofy and dumb), and the bad guy is trying to steal money, and is threatening to kill hostages. Oh, and Blart’s daughter becomes a hostage because she turns up for some reason. You got all that!?

There’s really not much to say about this second half of the movie because it’s really just boring and there’s not even anything to discuss. There are barely any jokes, and the ones that do pop up aren’t anywhere near as brain-destructive as in the first half. It’s retarded how these bad guys jump around like fucking idiots, though, so there’s that.

They’re like ninjas. One of the bad guys rides a skateboard, others are on BMX bikes. It’s really stupid and I don’t understand it.

Blart ends up defeating all the bad guys after being stuck in an air duct because he’s fat (that’s the joke). He finds that there are number codes printed on the baddies’ arms in invisible ink - these are the bank codes or something that Veck wants in order to steal money or something. I don’t know, I’m really having trouble staying awake at this point. Oh, there is this one scene where Blart says “scuba doobie doo” and hits a guy with a scuba tank. It’s a really out of place joke that’s dated by at least thirty years and I don’t really know why it’s there.

He also eats a lollypop off the ground because of hypoglycemia. Hilarious, I know.

So eventually Blart rescues the hostages and then chases after Veck in a car to the airport, with one of the members of SWAT riding with him. This SWAT guy is the deep-voiced guy that always plays a SWAT guy. Apparently he and Blart went to high school together, and that bit of character back story is unnecessary and I don’t really know why it’s there because it adds nothing to the plot. So they finally arrive at the airport, Veck and the SWAT guy (who, in a twist ending is a bad guy for some reason) are arrested by some Zach Braff clone, and everything turns out okay. In predictable bullshit fashion, Blart gets the girl, learns to believe in himself, and earns back the respect of his daughter. They then live happily ever after.

Fuck this movie.