Paul Blart: Mall Cop (**½)

Directed by: Steve Carr
Starring: Kevin James, Keir O’Donnell, Jayma Mays
Seen: March 25th 2009

**½ Out of ****

Safety never takes a holiday. So says Paul Blart (James), an overweight, hypoglycaemic mall security guard. The hypoglycaemia makes him faint after prolonged periods without sugar, which causes for some entertaining pain on his side. The film starts with Paul taking part in the state trooper examination, which he fails spectacularly after fainting while running. Then cut to his home, where he is having dinner with his mother and daughter, his much more overweight-than-him-wife having run off. He gorges himself on food, silently repeating his mantra, “Go away pain”, as he slathers more peanut butter onto the pie he gets for dessert.

Paul is secretly in love with Amy (Mays), the proprietor of a small wig-shop in the mall. He drives by on his Segway at every possible opportunity, manufacturing a chance to meet her, but he ends up buying a wig and receiving some verbal abuse from Stuart, a pen salesman, about his weight and profession, with Stuart also trying to dissuade him from approaching Amy. That night at an employee get together at a local pub, Paul gets smashingly drunk and ruins his good rapport with Amy.

Back at the mall, he is belittled by the other (and his superior) security guards for doing more than necessary, among other things trying to plan more effective foot-traffic in the mall. As he takes Veck (O'Donnell), the new recruit out to teach him the ropes, however, he is confident in training Veck how to handle situations - making it seem that he is armed without actually being armed. He is a good security guard (or officer, as Paul explains to Amy), and only his hypoglycaemia keeps him from moving on. And then he gets beaten up by an overweight lady in Victoria’s Secret, when he implies that they have the same struggle against obesity.

As the mall gets closed down on Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving), the busiest shopping day of the year, a bunch of thugs take over, evacuate most of the people, and takes a few people hostage, all this while Paul is playing guitar hero in the arcade, behind locked doors. And as Paul gets an opportunity to leave the mall, he sees Amy’s car I the parking lot, and realising she might be in danger, he goes back into the mall, and takes the thugs on, successfully removing one at a time until only their leader is left.

The film takes a while to get up to speed, with the Die Hard-type, sans the f-word and bloody gore (the only blood is a few small cuts, one which Paul covers with a Hello Kitty band-aid), action only starting around halfway through. But once it starts you pretty much forget the lengthy setup and the only problem then seems that things resolve a bit too quickly, I would have preferred about 15 minutes less setup time in favour of more of the fun action that was presented. Kevin James is very charming and convincing as the straight-laced protagonist, and you will find yourself rooting for him, no matter what.

The father-daughter story and the love story does not detract from the main story, it is in fact quite decent filler. One very cool scene involving a slow-motion-flying drop of hot sauce talks of not capitalising on opportunities, and I feel that the movie didn’t step into that trap as a whole. Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the Die Hard for young boys, and it is just about as good as can be expected from a film with this title.