I put down this vehicle from Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy, and Murphy in particular the first time but having seen it again, recently, I can see that it does have some very funny bits.This is by no means to say that this is the greatest buddy comedy of all time, but really what can you do to the already exhausted subgenre? What director, Tom Dey, has tried to do is make it a satire of the clichés of buddy comedy and the media. Early in the movie the executive of a cable network asks: "How is this different from Cops?", when Chase Renzi is pitching the idea of a reality show dealing with De Niro's character, Mitch Preston (hilariously boring name by the way). That's when I saw it in a new light that I hadn't previously noticed.The idea is to show all the elements of the buddy comedy and put a twist on them. De Niro's reluctance to star in the show and to partner up with Murphy is right out of every cop film you can think of. You can say that De Niro is actually playing himself asking: "Why would I do another movie playing a cop?" Chase Renzi is portrayed to be a Hollywood phony but if you look at her opening scene again, she is merely doing it to save her job. She somehow sees the ridiculousness of what she is doing but she wants to succeed despite that. One line says it all: "Who doesn't want to be on TV?" Maybe this is reading too much into what is essentially a lightweight film, merely set to entertain, but it does give it a little spin that I hadn't noticed before.As for Murphy. You got to applaud him for looking this ridiculous. Trey wants to be a star so bad that he is willing to sell out everything he comes in contact with. Murphy was a big star and maybe it struck a nerve that it is all so fleeting.The plot with the gun is of course pretty boring. The action sequences are nothing special, except the end which required a lot of effort both from cast and crew. One thing that I noticed about the villain is that he is dressed like an 80's pop star. George Michael comes to mind and that adds to the whole media spin.So, I trashed it the first time around but what the heck; if you are gonna do this, why not point out how ridiculous it really is and De Niro and Murphy took a big chance doing this.
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