| Movie Review: Taxi |
| Monday, October 11, 2004 |
Well, this will probably be a short review as there really wasn't anything all that memorable about this movie. I remember seeing the trailer and thinking that it looked pretty good, and reminded me that it was actually a remake. It was a French film made back in 1998, which received decent notices and received two sequels, this one will not be so lucky. The writer of the original, Luc Besson (Fifth Element), served as producer over this debacle.
The movie stars Jimmy Fallon as Washburn, a cop who is such a bad driver that he has is license taken away and resorts to taking a cab to the scene of a bank robbery. That cab happens to be run by Belle (Queen Latifah). who has an impossibly souped up transformer of a cab that whizzes them through Manhattan in no time. The story revolves around Fallon blundering his way into car chase after car chase, dragging along Queen Latifah as his personal driver, being outsmarted by a group of super model bank robbers, led by Gisele Bundchen's Vanessa.
The movie is utterly preposterous and without any laughs. I honestly could not see the point to this movie. Generally speaking, I am good at suspending disbelief and having fun with a movie, I had done it successfully a few times this year at movies such as AvP and Resident Evil 2. Here, I just couldn't do it. The story was non-existent, the humor was off the mark, and the action was stale and unimaginative. Nothing clicked. It's a shame, too. The idea could have been fertile ground for a fun imaginative film, and it is turned into tepid, warmed over action/comedy cannon fodder.
It was directed by Tim Story, who fared much better a few years back with Barbershop. That was a funny movie. His direction here was uninspired. The action sequences, of which there are many, went nowhere and were not interesting visually, we may just as well have them sitting in traffic. The writing was not much better, the jokes fell flat, and there was no story. Even in buddy comedies like this, we like to have a story, we would like to see more of our bad guys, or gals, and their motivations, someone forgot that part here.
Jimmy Fallon shows that he should not be making movies, I like him too, he was funny on SNL even if he didn't have the level of self control needed for live television. Maybe that is his problem here, he just doesn't quite have that elusive it material to allow him to step to the next level. Queen Latifah, on the other hand, is extremely talented, and to watch her handcuffed by the poor script, struggling to breath life into a dead end character was just a shame. This material is well beneath her considerable talent. Jennifer Esposito is just the typical combative chief who comes down on our star, like so many before her have done. She has done better work here, but it's a thankless role which could have been just about anybody. Finally we have super model Gisele Bundchen making her big screen debut in a role which primarily requires her to walk around looking hot, which, I guess, isn't much of a stretch considering her primary body of work to this point. Not many lines, no character development, nothing.
Bottomline. What a pointless film, there is no real story, no real objective, no real conflict. All we get is lame jokes followed by lame car chases, all filled with a lot of lame dialogue. I think I may have emitted two chuckles the whole film, most of the time I was just bored. Surprisingly, I am still interested in seeing the original French film.
Not Recommended.
Labels: Movie Review
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posted by Chris @ 9:11 AM   |
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