Originally published April 19, 2015 on FrontRowCentral.com
Was Paul Blart ever endearing? His first movie came out in January of 2009 and inexplicably took America by storm, so his family-friendly shenanigans obviously connected with somebody. Based on the evidence provided in Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, Paul Blart has always been a passive aggressive, self-centered blob of accidental justice. This time around, he gets to add psychotic rambling, emotional sabotage and compulsive negging to his bag of tricks as he terrorizes the hearts and minds of Las Vegas’ elite. It goes over about as well as you’d expect.
There’s only the vaguest semblance of a plot here, which is more or less the exact same story as its predecessor anyway, complete with a fleeting resemblance to Die Hard. While six years have passed since last we saw Blart (Kevin James), the sequel picks up six days after the end of the first film. In that time, Blart’s beautiful new wife has already filed for divorce and his dear old mother has been flattened by a milk truck. (In the Blartverse, when it rains it pours.) Cut to the present, where we find Paul Blart still living in his own bloated shadow as a local hero and privately wallowing in grief. Having achieved everything he ever wanted and then having it suddenly torn away from him has turned this man sour. And not the cool, John McClane/Martin Riggs flavor of sour. No, Paul Blart is the “accidentally drinking from a jug of bad milk” sour, and his film has an intensely bitter case of self loathing that leeches all the remaining humor out of a fat man who thinks he’s Bruce Willis.
Fortunately, Paul gets some good news when finds out he’s been invited to the Security Officer convention in Las Vegas. For some reason, he assumes he’s being recognized for his heroic deed from six goddamn years ago. Paul and his daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez) arrive at the Wynn resort in Vegas, where he immediately starts throwing his weight around as the world’s greatest rent-a-cop, while Maya tries to distance herself from him, as any sane individual would. Meanwhile, a generic Hans Gruber-type named Vincent (Neal McDonough) shows up with a high-tech scheme to steal the hotel’s collection of precious art. He nearly gets away with it until Maya literally stumbles into his command center on her way to the bathroom. From here, things play out pretty much as you’d expect. Vincent takes Maya hostage, forcing her dad to spring into action and rescue her.
You’d think that setting the action in Las Vegas would be a perfect excuse to take the action bigger and bolder. Maybe use the city’s bright lights and ridiculous opulence to the film’s advantage; after all, what are slot machines and water fountains if not the very definition of obnoxious excess? Instead, the film capitalizes on the fact that the Wynn has its own little shopping mall, which means this film looks and feels almost identical to the first. If you’re just going to do the mall thing again, why even bother taking the story to Las Vegas? Did Kevin James finally decide to start using the Happy Madison bankroll to take a fancy vacation of his own?
Of course, Blartman isn’t alone his mission this time around. He has his own team of rent-a-cops (pictured above on the right) and a convention hall full of non-lethal firearms at his disposal to help take out the bad guys. It’s hard to even describe the whos and whys of all this, because everything in this film exists to deliver a joke that never lands. “Paul Blart the Mall Cop thinks he’s great at his job, but in reality he’s kind of the worst.” That’s an SNL skit, not a feature film that someone decided to make twice. The only genuine laugh in the entire film stems from a ridiculous shouting match between Blartman and Neal McDonough, where each man describes how crazy he is. It feels like they’re trying to spin some bad improv into serious drama, but the payoff is so unbelievably stupid that it works. God help me, I laughed. There. I just praised this garbage movie for doing something right.
I genuinely despise Paul Blart. Paul Blart 2 is a waste of time, sure, but I’m talking about the character here. There is absolutely no reason for us to like this character other than the film flat out telling us to. When the hotel’s manager, Divina (Daniella Alonso), personally greets Blart by the pool, he says he doesn’t care for her romantic advances. Completely vexed, she asks her co-worker Eduardo what Blart’s deal is. “They say overweight people use humor to achieve affection,” he replies. This sets off a chain of events that end with Blartman successfully negging Divina right into his arms without even realizing it. Of course, once that damage has been done, the film takes a baby step back so as not to end with Paul Blart becoming the unrepentant pickup artist he’s been set up to eventually become. Leave us something to look forward to in the sequel, right?
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