The Story: Roland Sharp (Tommy Lee Jones), Texas Ranger, gets placed in charge of protecting five sexy yet annoying cheerleaders after they witness a murder. Clean and simple.
The Good: There's the occasional laugh. The cheerleaders are worth looking at. It doesn't immediately make you want to shove a sharp implement through your ocular cavity and mix your brain into pudding to make your escape.
The Bad: To begin at the beginning, there's this little two-screen effect they do during the intro credits that shows Sharp and his partner trying to arrest bad guy Morgan Ball (played by Curtis Armstrong, yay). While it was an interesting idea, it ended up being just visually distracting.
So, during the split-screen nonsense, partner lady gets . . . injured or killed or something. I'm not entirely sure which. She ends up being carted away either way, and her situation is mentioned ONCE afterwards. Sharp's feelings on his partner's predicament are brought up, but never resolved. If she was, in fact, only injured, it doesn't really matter because she's never seen again. It has the rancid stink of a subplot that was never fully developed, but couldn't be fully cut because there was no time and/or money to refilm the opening scenes.
The cheerleaders are supposed to be annoying. This is expected. This is one of the reasons people go to watch the movie. We want to see the stodgy Jones be antagonized by these fine but annoying ladies for the comedic value. Sadly, what's annoying is the fact that they often try TOO HARD to be annoying. The result is that their efforts fall flat and I ended up being more bored with their personalities than annoyed by them.
Ready for a shock? There's a romantic subplot! *gasp* But the fact that this was going to be included in the movie whether we wanted it to be or not isn't the problem. The problem is that its delivery is so horribly hamfistted that it's even more difficult to buy into than most other romantic subplots. Even worse is that it's hardly predictable only because it's introduced only half a minute after the romantic interest herself first graces the screen.
Speaking of hamfistted, the whole cheerleader/Texas Ranger dynamic is horribly off. Sharp goes from "I ain't tellin' you my personal problems" to "I'm divorced and I don't connect well with my kid" in all of five minutes. There's a little emotional connection between Sharp and a couple (and I really mean only a couple . . . the rest just seem to follow the group) of the cheerleaders, but much of it seems completely unconnected from his finally opening up.
There's not even the slightest pretense at trying to hide who the real bad guy is. It wasn't really necessary that they do so - especially since it was painfully obvious, even from the very beginning - but there wasn't any reason NOT to, either, and it might have added at least a little bit of tension to the generally lifeless plot.
*sigh* I could go on and on, I really could, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.
The Deal: Ugh. Y'know, one of the oddest things about being named Roland is that, for some reason, virtually every character named Roland in every movie, TV show, or whatever has something horribly wrong or disappointing about them. They're scummy criminals, disgusting social rejects, boring wallflowers, insane jerks, or something else that makes you wonder if everyone on the planet grew up with someone named Roland that they really really hate.
In this case, Roland is the main character in a horrible failure of a movie.
The real shame of it is that there is a good deal of potential lurking around the edges of this movie. There are a few action scenes that are quite good . . . unfortunate that they're horribly misplaced, breaking up the comedy pace that the rest of the movie tries so desperately to set up. This potential and the cheerleader hotness is the only reason I'm not giving this movie the lowest score possible.
If, for some reason, you DO still want to see it, you'd be best off waiting to rent - or, more preferably, borrow - the DVD.
The Good: There's the occasional laugh. The cheerleaders are worth looking at. It doesn't immediately make you want to shove a sharp implement through your ocular cavity and mix your brain into pudding to make your escape.
The Bad: To begin at the beginning, there's this little two-screen effect they do during the intro credits that shows Sharp and his partner trying to arrest bad guy Morgan Ball (played by Curtis Armstrong, yay). While it was an interesting idea, it ended up being just visually distracting.
So, during the split-screen nonsense, partner lady gets . . . injured or killed or something. I'm not entirely sure which. She ends up being carted away either way, and her situation is mentioned ONCE afterwards. Sharp's feelings on his partner's predicament are brought up, but never resolved. If she was, in fact, only injured, it doesn't really matter because she's never seen again. It has the rancid stink of a subplot that was never fully developed, but couldn't be fully cut because there was no time and/or money to refilm the opening scenes.
The cheerleaders are supposed to be annoying. This is expected. This is one of the reasons people go to watch the movie. We want to see the stodgy Jones be antagonized by these fine but annoying ladies for the comedic value. Sadly, what's annoying is the fact that they often try TOO HARD to be annoying. The result is that their efforts fall flat and I ended up being more bored with their personalities than annoyed by them.
Ready for a shock? There's a romantic subplot! *gasp* But the fact that this was going to be included in the movie whether we wanted it to be or not isn't the problem. The problem is that its delivery is so horribly hamfistted that it's even more difficult to buy into than most other romantic subplots. Even worse is that it's hardly predictable only because it's introduced only half a minute after the romantic interest herself first graces the screen.
Speaking of hamfistted, the whole cheerleader/Texas Ranger dynamic is horribly off. Sharp goes from "I ain't tellin' you my personal problems" to "I'm divorced and I don't connect well with my kid" in all of five minutes. There's a little emotional connection between Sharp and a couple (and I really mean only a couple . . . the rest just seem to follow the group) of the cheerleaders, but much of it seems completely unconnected from his finally opening up.
There's not even the slightest pretense at trying to hide who the real bad guy is. It wasn't really necessary that they do so - especially since it was painfully obvious, even from the very beginning - but there wasn't any reason NOT to, either, and it might have added at least a little bit of tension to the generally lifeless plot.
*sigh* I could go on and on, I really could, but I think I'll leave it at that for now.
The Deal: Ugh. Y'know, one of the oddest things about being named Roland is that, for some reason, virtually every character named Roland in every movie, TV show, or whatever has something horribly wrong or disappointing about them. They're scummy criminals, disgusting social rejects, boring wallflowers, insane jerks, or something else that makes you wonder if everyone on the planet grew up with someone named Roland that they really really hate.
In this case, Roland is the main character in a horrible failure of a movie.
The real shame of it is that there is a good deal of potential lurking around the edges of this movie. There are a few action scenes that are quite good . . . unfortunate that they're horribly misplaced, breaking up the comedy pace that the rest of the movie tries so desperately to set up. This potential and the cheerleader hotness is the only reason I'm not giving this movie the lowest score possible.
If, for some reason, you DO still want to see it, you'd be best off waiting to rent - or, more preferably, borrow - the DVD.