The Tuxedo Review
by Ronald O. Christian (ronc AT europa DOT com)September 30th, 2002
The Tuxedo
Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewett, a bunch of stunt actors. One star of five, 20%, definitely rotten
A review by Ronald O. Christian
Just came back from renting... I mean seeing The Tuxedo.
Wow. I guess every actor has a "worst movie", and this happens to be Chan's. I don't remember seeing a more schizophrenic film. A couple lines of decent, snappy dialog followed by a scene so incredibly moronic that it makes your frontal lobes bleed, and then it goes on and on and on... And then the film partially redeems itself in a short scene, and then here comes another long, painfully stupid scene. There'll be a well-done bit of physical comedy followed by a bit that wouldn't be accepted for a middle-school play. Back and forth and back and forth like Doctor Jekyll on Methamphetamines.
It's like they made this really smart, snappy film with a reasonably original premise, and then realized they only had 53 minutes of usable footage. So they hired, like, Tom Greene to fill it out to 88 minutes. Or, I dunno, they had to use the outtakes. Or all copies of the script got burnt in a tragic trailer fire and all the principles were working from vague Champagne-corroded memory.
Unfortunately, the good parts aren't good enough to redeem the bad parts. In a few places I was thinking of taking a bathroom break just until this scene is over. And maybe that scene. And definitely that scene.
It's easy to jump on J. Hewett for the low quality of The Tuxedo, but I think she's proven elsewhere (Heartbreakers, for instance) that she can act, and can actually do comedy, given the right environment. Something was wrong with this film, and I don't really think it was her. (BTW, what's up with JLH? She looked twenty pounds underweight and strung out. Is she having some sort of pharmaceutical crisis?)
Bottom line: The Tuxedo. Painfully stupid. Go rent Legend of Drunken Master or Rush Hour instead.
Ron
http://roc85.home.attbi.com
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