Hey folks, Harry here with our buddy Charlie Hodge and his look at SHOWTIME. Tom Dey's follow up flick to SHANGHAI NOON starring Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy... Problem is the script has been pretty weak according to most reports... However, due to the fact they have months and months of time before the film will be released some time in 2002. Of course this guy's review is confusing to me. I love 48 HOURS to death. Really like RUSH HOUR and can't stand TANGO AND CASH which he seems to have some sort of affinity for. Anyway here ya go...

Hey there, Harry. I have sent you screening reviews in the past (A Knight's Tale, Life as a House) and I've got another one for you. Tonight I saw the very first test screening for one of Warner Brothers' tent pole releases for next summer: the action-comedy Showtime starring Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro by the director and writers of Shanghai Noon. It was of rough print with temporary titles and some unfinished effects, but overall felt like a completed movie. The basic plot is this: Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy are both Los Angeles police officers. DeNiro plays the typical "loose cannon" no-nonsense detective, while Murphy plays a bumbling showboat patrolman who is more interested in pursuing an acting career than in being a cop. The two are put together to star in a reality-based television show about cops with Rene Russo as the show's producer.

Overall, this is a fair to mediocre movie. The comedic elements for the most part work, the action elements do not. DeNiro and Murphy have good chemistry together and there are some genuinely amusing moments between the two. That being said, the humor in this film feels recycled. Its like watching a great episode of The Simpsons for a 24th time, or listening to a great comedy album over and over. Its still funny; its just doesn't feel fresh. The humor is all based on that Lethal Weapon polar-opposites buddy-cop shtick we've all seen ad nauseum. But of course, when that shtick is performed by Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy, it can't help but work at least some of the time. The action sequences and whole villain story line were absolutely recycled paint-by-numbers action movie fare. And often bad to the point of being ridiculous. This movie would have worked so much better if the action element was left out and it played as a straight-ahead comedy.

The performances in general were competent but nothing special. Murphy was the outlandish goofball, DeNiro was the stoic hard-ass as straight man, and Rene Russo, alas, while looking mighty fine had very little to do. While watching Eddie Murphy's antics on the screen and laughing more often than not at them I couldn't help but think of the Eddie of old. The 48 Hours Eddie. The Beverly Hills Cop Eddie. Back when Eddie was funny and cool. Somehow in the last fifteen or twenty years his comedy has devolved into this safe and silly slapstick that is once again on display in Showtime. Don't get me wrong, I think Eddie Murphy is a tremendously gifted comedic actor, but now he just seems to try too hard in a Jim Carrey kind of way. And DeNiro is funny once again in yet another send-up of his image, but that joke has just about been mined for all its worth and is beginning to wear thin.

So to place this movie on the Buddy-Cop-Movie-Spectrum, its five places behind Lethal Weapon, three places ahead of Tango and Cash (which is that rare movie, like music by Loverboy, that is so bad it actually comes full circle and becomes good), and nineteen places ahead of Rush Hour (which ranks just behind a poke in the eye with a shrimp fork).

Call me Charlie Hodge.