Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at the RENO 911 movie. The footage I saw at Comic-Con was hilarious and I find myself laughing at the TV spots, even though I have no real love for the show. Every time I go back to the show and give it another chance I find myself disappointed with it, which is weird because I genuinely find the characters funny. I hope the movie rocks and the below review assures me and you that it's a funny movie, although there's a warning that it follows the show's hit and miss formula a bit... Anyway, the spoilers aren't huge, but you'll know more about the movie than you might want to, hence the spoiler tag on the story. Enjoy!
Hey Harry and Mori, I recently caught a screening of Reno 911: Miami in NYC at the FOX building. It was pretty cool- the security there is super tight. I even got to see Greta Van Sustren without makeup- she sorta looked like a sock puppet. Anyway, the movie Not much to talk about. Its funny. Really funny. I know we have Knocked Up and Hot Fuzz coming up later this year, but this is an excellent appetizer, and in a weaker year, it could easily be the years funniest. The rub lies in your feelings of the show, the hit-and-miss ratio of which carries over to the film. Unlike, say, Christopher Guests troupe, which I feel comfortable placing them with, the Reno 911 guys gravitate between existing in a world equally cartoonish as their creations and one in which there is real life, a la the show progenitor, Cops. The plot follows the troupe as they head to Miami for a police convention, only to be excluded from the building. Unbeknownst to the cops inside, a virus has been let out that quarantines all the cops in the local area, and the only policemen in town end up being the Reno 911 guys. Cue crazy make-em-ups. Lots of wacky cameos. Danny DeVito and the Rock have a few early laughs, while Paul Rudd has an extended bit as a Scarface-like Hispanic mob boss who threatens his captives with a weed whacker. Patton Oswalt is the towns acting mayor, and he has some good cracks as an exasperated dwarf of a man constantly degraded by all around him. The more notable cameos for big comedy fans come from the reunited members of The State, but dont get excited- theyre all reduced to playing various members of a tattoo parlor, and none of them get anything particularly funny to do in a running b-plot that has no bearing on the main story. One interesting wrinkle to the movie is the R-rating. I suppose they could have maximized their audience and gone for the largely PG-13 crowd that probably makes up its base viewership, but they decided to go for broke, which is excellent. In addition to the expected foul language, this movies got quite the collection of boobsies. Perhaps you remember the gag in the trailer with the whale? Well, that happens on a topless beach. Easily my favorite scene from 2007 so far that doesnt involve a guy with a flaming skull saying, Its on! The tradeoff for all those boobs? Maybe a record number of onscreen masturbation sequences. Not as awesome as it sounds- quite actually the opposite of awesome. Anyway, its highly recommended for anyone who even moderately enjoys the show. Its a great ensemble in that everyone gets their chance to shine, making it a very breezy ninety minutes, give or take the massively long aftercredits sequences. -Fabfunk
