10/30/06 Taxi

Taxi (2004), directed by Tim Story

watched solo; DVD (borrowed from parents) @ home

No it's not the loveable misfit sitcom from the 1970's with Danny DeVito cracking wiseacre jokes, Tony Danza playing cool as a cucumber tough, and Andy Kaufman as Latka hamming it up for foreign yuks. Instead, we get a idiotic retread of French filmmaker Luc Besson's 1998 stylishly written movie of the same name but American-ized. And the roles are given to moron Jimmy Fallon cracking dumbass jokes, Queen Latifah playing cool as a cucumber roughneck, and well Luc Besson hamming it up with foreign yucks. The one solitary thing that attracted me to this version however was actually in the writing credits for the film, as they included some names that you may never have heard of, but if you paid attention to a few mentions in this year's Challenge...have gained some insight into the many instances of "The State" and its former members comedic timing. Two of the guys on the case for helping re-write this Besson script with an offbeat American twinge are none other than "Reno:911's" Thomas Lennon (Lt. Jim Dangle and his short shorts) and Ben Garant (Deputy Travis Junior and his stache). Yes, it's true...these funny dudes have brought us some hilarious things with "The State" and "Reno:911" but have also fallen flat on their "just paying the bills" butts with such stinkers as "The Pacifier" and "Herbie Fully Loaded." I guess everyone is entitled to a few mess-ups in their life, but I still wanted to give this movie a chance. You have Fallon as inept detective Washburn, who can't drive a car to save his life commandeering the taxi cab of speed demon and street-smart cabbie Belle (Latifah) teaming up in the oddest of odd couple pairings...all in the hopes of catching the masquerading gang of beautiful Brazilian babe bank robbers (there's a tongue-twister for you, and I'm just talking about the alliteration fellas!). No one believes loser Washburn as he's hot on the trail of the criminals, and even his new "partner" Belle would rather be driving race cars than solving crimes. One of the few Besson touches you can see in the film is when Belle's cab becomes "Pimp My Ride" with the push of a button, creating her taxi to be anything but street legal...something you might see on MTV's "Cribs" in an airplane hanger garage. The story is stupid, the acting is terrible, the writing is half-hearted, and probably delivered so badly anyway. While I've seen much worse, I was expecting a bit more from the producers and writers...although I should have known better from a director who only did the turd of a comic book hero movie in "Fantastic Four." There are way better futuristic flying cars in Besson's "The Fifth Element," and Fallon was only funny when he couldn't stop laughing at his own jokes on "SNL." Could I plug any more shows more and this movie less?

2 out of 5 stars