Showtime Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)March 13th, 2002
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Can anyone tell me what's happened to Robert DeNiro? I seem to recall a time when he was widely considered to be one of the greatest dramatic actors of his generation. Remember when Oscar nominated him nearly every year? Or when he only occasionally forayed into comedy (as in The King of)? Over the last few years, DeNiro's dramatic work has been pretty mediocre, while his few hits have all come from comedies where he seems to be lampooning the very roles that won him critical acclaim.
Of course, with the incredible success of Analyze This and Meet the Parents (and the anticipation of their subsequent sequels, Analyze That and Meet the Fockers), there's bound to be a couple of bad comedies in the mix, like The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and the brand-new Showtime, in which DeNiro plays a police detective (there's no middle ground with this guy - he's either upholding the law or trying to break it). I think Showtime is supposed to be a parody of the rubbed-in-the-dirt buddy cop genre (read: Lethal Weapon) but is instead a grating, emaciated flick that costars the King of the Completely Unnecessary Comedic-Action Sequels himself, Eddie Murphy.
DeNiro (The Score) plays Mitch Preston, a quiet, no-nonsense veteran detective who is the complete opposite of loudmouth, showboating "rookie" Trey Sellars (40-year-old Murphy, Dr. Dolittle 2). Showtime opens with an overly long intro that's incredibly pointless since you know exactly where it's going: Mitch and Trey are "discovered" by a television producer named Chase Renzi (Rene Russo, The Thomas Crown Affair) who decides they'd be perfect to star in her new reality television show that follows the lives of two police officers. Mitch hates the idea, while Trey, an aspiring actor, looks forward to becoming a big star.
So you've got the whole old-cop/new-cop thing, as well as the partners-who-don't-get-along thing, and somewhere in the middle of that cliché-riddled mess, there's a crime to solve, too. It seems some crazy baddie (played by the ubiquitous Guy With Non-Specific Accent) has found a way to produce really big guns that pump lead through just about anything, leaving holes nearly as large as those in Showtime's narrative, which is highlighted by one of the longest, clumsiest montages I may have ever seen.
If it wasn't supposed to be a spoof, Showtime certainly meant to take some kind of stance on the media's involvement in modern society, but it fails miserably here. In fact, the most interesting thing about this particular angle is that DeNiro is barely one year removed from 15 Minutes, where his Eddie Fleming was a media-savvy antithesis of his character in Showtime. And like that film, DeNiro riffs on his famous Taxi Driver soliloquy here, too.
Showtime was written by first-timer Keith Sharon before being polished by Shanghai Noon's Alfred Gough and Miles Millar and eventually directed by that film's Tom Dey. Noon was one of the funniest films of 2000 and blew life into the floundering buddy genre, but after seeing Showtime, I'm completely convinced Owen Wilson must have had a ton of creative input into its hysterical gags because there are absolutely no similarities between the comedy there and the "comedy" here. Even Showtime's outtakes that run during the closing credits are weak.
1:40 - PG-13 for action violence, language and some drug content
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