Originally published August 17, 2015. Updated April 14, 2018.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2. 2015.
Directed by Andy Fickman.
Starring Kevin James, Raini Rodriguez, Neal McDonough, Daniella Alonso, David Henrie, Gary Valentine and Ana Gasteyer.
SYNOPSIS:
After six years of keeping our malls safe, Paul Blart has earned a well-deserved vacation. He heads to Vegas with his teenage daughter before she heads off to college. But safety never takes a holiday and when duty calls, Blart answers.
Kevin James is back as Paul Blart in the sequel that nobody asked for.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t mind the first film. Sure it wasn’t great but I didn’t flat out hate it either. Despite his very lackluster film career so far I do like Kevin James and think he can be funny given the right material – just look at Hitch and his years on The King of Queens. Since the first film was a surprising box office success it was inevitable that a sequel would follow, but it’s just a shame that nobody thought about even trying when it came to making this second outing.
This time around we pick up where the last film left off, as Paul marries his love interest Amy (Jayma Mays) only for her to leave him just six days later. This depresses Paul but he continues on keeping his mall safe. His daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez) is tired of seeing her dad so depressed and talks him into taking a much needed vacation. She recently got an acceptance letter to college and figures they can have one last trip together before she graduates. So they head off to Las Vegas where Paul must once again protect his daughter and many others from a man with an evil plan (Neal McDonough).
The first Paul Blart should get some credit for at least attempting to make a somewhat competent film, although whether or not they succeeded on that is a matter of opinion. Here it’s like they didn’t even try when it came to a script, funny jokes and acting in general. This is obviously just a cash grab seeing as the first one made so much money, but it would have been nice had anyone involved put any amount of effort into making this somewhat entertaining.
While it has one or two minor chuckles, that’s about the only positives I can really give to this bottom of the barrel film. This being another Happy Madison Production it’s best not to expect much but not even the actors can add anything to help make this better. Like I mentioned earlier, Kevin James can be good when given the right material but unfortunately he’s never given good material and here it’s no different. Even though the material is bad, James goes through the whole film on autopilot. Neal McDonough is just as bad as everyone else, even though he’s usually great at playing bad guys. Everyone just coasts along, adding nothing of value.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is a lazy, unfunny film and only exists because of the surprise success of the first movie. Had the filmmakers even attempted to try and put any kind of entertainment value into this, then maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad. Sadly that’s not the case and we’re left with an atrocity of a film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Jake Peffer – Follow me on Twitter
https://youtu.be/IWWtOQOZSTI?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
