Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a pair of reviews that tear TAXI a new asshole. There was a brief bit of hope last week with the positive review I posted... a brief hope that this movie wouldn't push all those who watch it within inches of taking their own lives instead of watching one more second. Seems like that hope was premature judging from the below two reviews. Who knows? I can laugh at FREDDY GOT FINGERED and everyone else in the world thought it was fingernails on a chalkboard. Maybe I'll be able to tolerate this one.
Ahoy there,
Please don't use my name- call me KingBoy D, and I feel it necessary to correct some misconceptions about TAXI- like the idea that it might be any good. Having sat through it with no preconceptions (I've heard of, but not seen the original), it basically added up to a rather turgid buddy movie with some of the blandest direction I've seen in a long time. Aside from a couple of relatively groovy stunt sequences, Tim Story shoots the whole thing with that horrible bland sitcom finish- if FANTASTIC FOUR doesn't have a decent DP then it is doomed, because this guy doesn't have a clue. It's not even tremendously funny, with most of the humour falling into the overplayed pratfall category.
Not to say that it's a complete pig-awful disaster- anyone wanting to stare at supermodels will enjoy the villains, and at least they're allowed to be subtitled. Giselle Bundchen is not bad- although I would have been more impressed if they hadn't gone straight for the lengthy striptease shots and the frankly embarresing sequence where she fondles Jennifer Esposito.
Ah, yes- Ms. Esposito, who really needs to get herself a better agent. She's actually playing the role of "Bossy Lieutenant who doesn't believe in the hero" that's normally taken by a fifty year old black guy, and although the idea of her and Jimmy Fallon's character dating seems totally improbable, it's nice to see her playing it straight and with no hint that they're actually going to get back together.
The two leads? Latifah is, as you'd expect, loud and brassy. Fallon, on the other hand, overdoes the klutz routine until you'd actually welcome a scene where he doesn't fall over, drop something or make a tit of himself.
Probably the worst aspect is the handling of the action, and the dreadful greenscreening in all of the car sequences that makes all the chases feel ridiculously unconvincing. In the year of THE BOURNE SUPREMACY's car chase, seeing this kind of dodgy sixties-style faking (why didn't they just go the whole hog and use back projection?) feels like rather a waste of time. (Highlight has to be the opening sequence, featuring a stunt bicylist executing some cool moves around New York- and once the bike arrives back at the delivery cut away- and suddenly Queen Latifah is getting off the bike. No attempt to make it look like she was actually doing it, and I'm pretty sure the stuntperson was a hell of a lot thinner...) It's also one of those New York films that's so obviously not filmed in New York- the few second unit NY shots stick out like sore thumbs.
Essentially, it's just yet another unremarkable comedy buddy movie, and it's the kind of entertainment level you'd get if you edited all the fights out of THE TRANSPORTER, and were just left with the frankly rather unimpressive stuff inbetween. Not a total sould-destroying disaster, but definitely nothing worth getting remotely excited about.
I thank you,
KingBoy D
Now on to the second eviscerating review... Although this one starts out like it's going to be a shakey-hand review, it goes quickly into god-awful territory. Yeesh. I can smell this one already and it ain't pretty.
To all the fine folks there:
I saw Taxi at a sneak preview here at UC Berkeley and just wanted to pass along my own opinion of the movie. I’m pretty much a PTA/Tarantino/Mann/Jeunet/etc kind of follower, so this kind of movie isn’t what I would generally pay money to see in the theater, if at all. Given that, I can and do enjoy the popcorn/Low Common Denominator kinds of movies, but this one definitely fell way the hell below the LCD line.
Now, to be fair, I’ve loved to see Queen Latifah (Belle in the movie) ever since her days on Living Single. So I was all too glad that I could see this movie as being all about her: when she’s having a good time, we’re having a good time. When she’s annoyed, we’re annoyed. And here, she’s annoyed a lot with Fallon’s character Washburn, and so is the audience. Sure there are laughs, but far and few between. More time is actually spent in Washburn irritating everyone in the movie than on audience pleasing things like car chases or comedy.
About the car chase scenes: they are hardly there. They’re shot and edited like car commercials, with countless “swoop” camera movements of the front or backs of the cars. They’re stale, tepid, just not suspenseful or exciting at all. It reminded me of Jurassic Park 3, where there was no real sense of dinosaurs actually being a threat to the people. Here, there’s no real sense of a chase. It was just flat.
Oh, and in one specific scene of the getaway car in a dead end alley having to turn around: totally CGI, totally not well done, totally embarrassing.
I’m not familiar with Fallon, saw him once on SNL (he wasn’t all that funny, not even amusing) and never in any movie except this one. Everything about Washburn is like an SNL skit that was dead on the page and for some reason stretched out to movie length. Washburn was an annoying one-dimensional, predictable character all the way through. Not that this kind of movie would have something as deep as character development (or a story arc, or a well-developed plot, or interesting characters (except for Belle)) but damn, it just feels like they filmed what came out in the first draft, written over a night of beers and joints, with a lot of “Oh yeah, wait: And what if they did THIS next?” kinds of questions.
Everything could have been better: the jokes, the set-ups, the characters, the chase scenes the plot and lame jokes dictated how the characters acted from one scene to the next. Suspension of disbelief is needed in these kinds of movies, sure, but here it was strained, broken, spat on, pissed on, shat on
What I found interesting was the respect/rivalry between Belle and the lead bank robber/getaway driver (Gisele Bundchen). If this movie should happen to make a bazillion dollars and gets a sequel made, get rid of everyone else except for Queen Latifah and Gisele, have them chase each other for some (interesting) reason and then you’d have a much more enjoyable movie.
True, there are going to be people saying “Lighten up! This is just popcorn entertainment!” This may be interesting to catch on TV some day in the future, but to shell out 5-10 bucks for this? By all means, go buy some popcorn, rent a good movie, invite friends over. That’ll be a much better way to spend your time and money than with this.
Should you all use this, call me digital
emunction.
