Cheer up boys,
you could have starred in the original TJ Hooker
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Film which
tries to take the mickey out of reality TV shows. Only trouble is,
it's not funny enough.
Nigel Bell
What with Big
Brother and Survivor the lines between reality and fiction
are becoming increasingly blurred.
That's the premise
of Showtime.
Stick a camera
crew with a real live cop and follow him on his day to day duties,
only change his life enough to make him television friendly.
The plot
Detective Mitch Preston (De Niro) is on the verge of a major
drug bust when cop/would-be actor Trey Sellars (Murphy) turns up
and ruins the operation.
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| De Nero
shoots the camera and that leads to all his problems |
Chasing the
fugitive, a frustrated Preston shoots a TV camera (just the camera,
not the operator).
It's the excuse
the TV company needs to file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against
the LAPD.
They're given
an opt-out - put Preston up as the star of a reality cop show called
Showtime, and they'll drop the claim.
Preston has
no choice but to conform but his mood isn't improved when wannabe
detective Sellars is named as his sidekick.
Thus the pair
are thrown together and have to track down villain Ceasar Vargas
(Pedro Dami谩n).
You won't be
surprised to hear it all ends in a big shoot-out.
The verdict
Showtime isn't as bad as you might have read about. It's
actually a nice idea - how real is reality TV?
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| Let's get
this straight - I do not say "beam me up Scotty" |
The biggest
problem the film has is whether it's a comedy or serious and actually
trying to make a relevant point.
Like the blurring
between contrived and real, Showtime can't seem to make up
its mind.
Some of the
jokes are just lame and predictable. At one stage Murphy is trying
to impress at a crime scene and orders the fingerprinting of a plastic
water bottle, only to discover it's owned by the chief of forensics.
But there are
good moments. William Shatner plays himself harking back to his
TJ Hooker days in an attempt to teach the real cops how to act for
the cameras.
There's also
a nice scene where Murphy pretends to be from the cable TV show
Justice to extract information from a reluctant con.
Essentially,
however, this is a buddy movie, with the reluctant De Niro eventually
accepting the Murphy character isn't as bad as he first thought.
Of course, he
can only come to that conclusion after several high velocity shoot-outs.
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