Jon Polito

Yes, the "MILF" craze has gotten so popular that even big stars (or at least people that used to be big stars) will show up for a MILF-oriented sex comedy.

Continue reading: Cougar Club Review

Ridley Scott has a good thing going here, tossing these two Hollywood bigshots into the ring and letting them play cops and robbers while he slathers on the period detail with a trowel. There's some serious Superfly outfits (including a godawful $50,000 chinchilla coat that plays a surprisingly key part in a plot twist), a generous helping of soul music, enough fantastic character actors to choke a horse (Idris Elba, Jon Polito, Kevin Corrigan, an incredibly sleazy Josh Brolin, and so on), the specter of Vietnam playing on every television in sight, and the odd enjoyment one gets from watching cops in the pre-militarized, pre-SWAT days take down an apartment with just revolvers, the occasional shotgun, and a sledgehammer to whack down the door. Scott's smart enough to let the story cohere organically and without rush, keeping his main contenders apart for as long as could possibly be borne, making them fully developed characters in their own right and not just developed in opposition to the other. But there's something in this broad and expansive tale that can't quite come together, and it seems to start in Denzel's eyes.

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Well, you borrow the oldest trick in the book by putting your characters in the desert, where you can pretty much shoot your movie for free!

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Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows pulled it off because1) they gave a certain tenacious chemistry to their characters' head-buttingmarriage, 2) Gleason had a gift for finding humor and humanity in unsympatheticroles, and 3) it was a simpler time, when idiotic get-rich-quick schemesweren't quite such a tiresome excuse for cheap laughs.

But none of this is true of the big-screen remake starringCedric the Entertainer as conniving New York City bus driver Ralph Kramden,who spends the whole movie lying to his waitress wife Alice (GabrielleUnion) while emptying their bank account to buy an antique train car (hethinks fitting it with tires is enough to create a money-making tour bus)or to race a stray greyhound at the local track.

Cedric may split sides with his stand-up routines and politicallyincorrect topical rants in the "Barbershop"movies,but here he's sleepwalking through a routine script full of uninspiredexposition ("All we need is $20,000 for the down payment..."),stereotypical characters (loud-mouthed mother-in-law), shopworn physicalgags (cayenne pepper ends up in someone's food), contrived conflicts (Ralphhas a falling out with Ed, his dim-witted plumber best pal played by half-stonedMike Epps), pop culture references ("You're just a regular UPN sitcom,ain't 'cha, Alice?"), lucky coincidences, and insultingly easy resolutionsto all life's problems.

Continue reading: The Honeymooners Review