It’s so wrong, and anyone over 14 will know it’s wrong, but it's also difficult to hate this movie. Paul Blart: Mall Cop features a never-ending, barrage of ‘fat’ jokes, scenes involving child endangerment, an utterly formula no surprise script that seems like a left-over from a bad late 60’s live action Disney film given a Pauley Shore update and of course it's all utterly implausible. It’s also a ‘dumb’ comedy and features lots of unimaginative slapstick.

So why didn’t the movie make me throw up?

It’s produced by Adam Sandler and not surprising follows Sandler’s comedy formula. There’s an absurd amount of forced pathos, there’s an unlikely love story, there’s two dimensional characters, there’s old. old jokes and tons of embarrassment type humor.

Kevin James is more portly than he was in his late CBS sitcom King of Queens. As the film opens a group of POLICE OFFICER trainees are told they will graduate and get jobs as long as they complete the obstacle course. Paul Blart is shorter and much heftier than anyone else. And they are off. Paul is sweating around his man boobs and belly button, but he is surprisingly agile. In fact he’s passing the recruits that sure look to be in better shape than he is. We watch others slip and fall, but not Paul. And then just a couple feet from the finish line, he falls, passed out and begins to loudly snore. He doesn’t pass. We discover he’s hypoglycemic.

Next scene we establish he has a 12 or 13 year old Mexican daughter and lives with his mom. He’s depressed and medicates his hypoglycemia with sugar fixes, like Mom’s pie which he slathers over with peanut butter explaining that ‘it fills the cracks of the heart’. Paul is a West Orange New Jersey Mall Security guard…. I’m sorry… officer. So yes, we will get the jokes about him being a frustrated cop who doesn’t actually have a gun, but he’ll train a recruit to have a move as if he has a gun.

Paul moves like a graceful ballerina on his job issued Segway personal transporter, but every once in while does something ridiculously clumsy. All his ‘skills’ do him no good on the job of course because absolutely no one shows him any respect, not his co-workers, not kids in the mall, not the workers in the mall, not an old man that is moving too fast in his wheel chair, not a large woman that he gets into a full out fight with (‘but he didn’t hit her’) And then of course there’s a very cute girl with large eyes, who likes him on first sight. No reason for her to do so.. it’s just one of those things that happens in the movie. And he could get fired for giving her a ride on his Segway, but he does and despite his altercations and clumsiness and bad judgment he doesn’t get fired either.

Steve Carr is the director and he seems to have perfected his comic timing on bad comedy films like Daddy Day Care, Are We Done Yet and Cedric the Entertainer. Kevin James is likeable in that portly funny man; Chris Farley, John Candy, Lou Costello, Curly of the Three Stages sort of way.

The movie so shamelessly exploits comedy cliché’s, unbelievable plot devices, you watch with disbelief. And then.. and then you find yourself somehow sucked into the sit-comish, comfortable rhythm of the thing. You know you’ll be safe in this movie. No one will actually be hurt (who doesn’t deserve it) and the good guy will win and there will be a few laughs and lots of moments where you go awwww and then a silly hap hap happy credit sequence.

 Oh I’m not proud of the fact that I enjoyed th e film. I know better. It’s NOT a good film, but I’m not going to deny it either. The damn thing charmed me and I was entertained. Ah I won’t beat myself up over it… it’s only a movie.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: None of the Above