Showtime (2002)

Too many fans seem to be blown away

Fantastic!

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

I'm amazed that this eighty-five million dollar movie received such negative reviews. I'll admit that it also amazes me that anyone would spend such a huge amount. The movie's actual U.S. gross was slightly less than half the negative cost, so the movie ended up returning its investors less than fifty cents in the dollar. I realize that some viewers would have problems with the script. It didn't worry me that the movie could be classed as a suspenseful, hard-action comedy-thriller. In my opinion, there's no reason why a movie can't imitate real life, but there's no doubt that the juxtaposition of comedy and thrills worried many viewers. It certainly didn't worry me! I could cite many, many famous books – just about everything written by Charles Dickens, for instance – in which comedy and suspense are similarly blended. As for the movie, in my opinion, all the actors deserve commendation, particularly the leads, Eddie Murphy and Robert De Niro. Director Tom Dey did an absolutely magnificent job, and I thought the camera-work by Thomas Kloss was absolutely superb. Available on an excellent Warner Brothers DVD.

This movie is unfunny, but it's unfunny in a weird way. It's not like it's one failed gag after the other, it's just that most of the time they don't even seem to be going for one. A lot of scenes in this movie seem very straight-forward with no comic intent whatsoever, so the thing looks more like a fluffy crime thriller than a hilarious comedy. With that said though: it's still a really terrible fluffy crime thriller. Everything is horrendously clichéd, right down to the eccentric untouchable foreign villain. None of this stuff is new, everything has been done so many times before. The only difference here is that Robert de Niro is now on board, which somehow makes things even worse, especially since he has no chemistry whatsoever with Eddie Murphy. This was kind of a chore to watch really, don't know why I bothered since you know the ending just by reading the plot summary. Oh well, at least the William Shatner cameo was good.

Two popular actors are paired in showtime like De Niro and Murphy playing a police and an actor. Although they share the most screen time together, they do not reach their expected performances such films like Analyse This, Meet the Parents, Dr Doolittle and Nutty Professor. The film starts interestingly but becomes a thin, ordinary comedy which is quite disappointing.It feels like especially De Niro doesn't enjoy being in Showtime. Thats a shame because he really shows his feelings thats what I think. Unfortunately, if the idea had been used cleverly this could have been a more interesting piece of work and could be followed with a sequel like any other popular Hollywood movie. Well, I don't think there would be a sequel to this at least casting De Niro and Murpy again. ** out of *****

This was a pretty good modern-day comedy with straight man Robert De Niro doing a good job with comedy and Eddie Murphy just playing his normal whacked-out character. You get a good combination of humor and action in here. It had the normal cliché the ending, the kind you can see coming a mile away, but it's okay; it didn't hurt the film.William Shatner was very entertaining in a supporting role and I think that was De Niro's real-life daughter playing Rene Russo's TV sidekick in the movie.A decent cop-buddy film that isn't memorable an entertaining way to kill an hour-and-a-half.