Film Review: Showtime (2002)

Popularity of reality shows at the turn of the millennium reflected itself into content of Hollywood films. One of the examples is Showtime, 2002 action comedy directed by Tom Dey, which uses reality show as its “high concept”. The protagonist, played by Robert De Niro, is LAPD Detective Mitch Preston, policeman who takes his job very seriously and doesn’t take kindly when it is interfered by aggressive television news crews. One of such instances, during which he failed to catch dangerous criminal, results in news camera being smashed in frustration. Preston is afterwards told that he can save his job only if he agrees to participate in reality show produced by the same network. His new partner becomes Trey Sellars (played by Eddie Murphy), inexperienced policeman who actually dreams about starting new career as an actor. Two men have problems to adapt to each other and both have plenty of misunderstanding with the show’s producer Chase Renzi (played by Rene Russo). Things escalate when they investigate crimes that would lead to dangerous arms smuggler Cesar Vargas (played by Pedro Damian).

Like with so many Hollywood “high concept” comedies, almost entire creativity seems to be spent on the high concept itself. The other idea – casting two very different actors in order to create simple “buddy buddy” dynamic – wasn’t particularly fortunate. Robert De Niro, despite reputation of one of America’s greatest actors, has again shown that comedies weren’t exactly his forte. His performance in Showtime looks even worse when compared with his role in 15 Minutes, black comedy with similar theme that was much better. Eddie Murphy, despite being one of the greatest film comedians two decades earlier, has proven, just like in I Spy, that not even his star power and “buddy buddy” experience, could save bad project. Quality of humour in the film is poor and, like with so many bad Hollywood comedies, producers tried to compensate it with large number of action scenes. All they did was to increase budget to 85 million US$, a ridiculous sum for this sort of film (at least in time when entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy had only 100 million US$), and guarantee that the film would end as massive flop. Presence of William Shatner who plays himself in cameo role is the only bright spot of Showtime and sign that this film could have been at least passable satire on modern media and celebrity culture. Unfortunately, this and many other opportunities weren’t taken, and Showtime ended as one of the more forgettable films of its time.

RATING: 2/10 (-)

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