THE TUXEDO

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 2 out of 5

Because of: sexual content/references

Rated:

Jackie Chan's first pairing with DreamWorks provides us with an interesting premise, a fun sidekick in the form of Jennifer Love Hewitt, and a lot of nifty gadgets, but it just doesn't have the sparkle and shine of a Chan original. The jokes aren't as funny. The stunts aren't as memorable. The dialogue isn't as cute. In short, it's Steven Spielberg trying to cash in on the martial arts' hero's popularity but not giving him the liberty to give us what we really want -- the old flavor of Jackie Chan. The Tuxedo starts out promisingly enough but looses momentum when the comedy becomes less funny and the sexual jokes take over.

Jimmy Tong (Jackie Chan) is a humble New York cabdriver who just wants to get up enough nerve to ask out the beautiful sales clerk inside a local art gallery. He may not have style, charm, wit or suave, but he can drive. Sort of. He's been nailed for a half dozen speeding tickets in the last two months and his taxicab is rumored to be the fastest in the city. After bungling his date attempt, nearly knocking a delivery boy flat and almost being pulverized by a local bully, Jimmy wakes up to find a beautiful, mysterious, snotty upper-class woman in the back of his cab. If he can get her to her destination before she finishes applying her designer eyeliner, she'll double the taxi meter. In a fine example of high-class driving, he makes it just in the nick of time and is paid off.

Just one thing. How would he like to make $2,000 a week, plus living conditions? Since Asian immigrants rarely see that kind of cash, Jimmy leaps at the opportunity. He's been hired as the driver of Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs), a secret agent with Central Intelligence. There's a conspiracy by a major bottled water retailer to poison all of the water reserves with a deadly virus which will dehydrate rather than soothe thirsty throats. The agent they plugged into the case wound up in a body bag, and Devlin has been called in to use his expertise to blow the lid off this devious water dealing. He's not at all what Jimmy expects -- laid back, down to earth, utterly charming... loves loud music, drive-through windows, and is particularly protective of his tuxedo.

The man is a living legend... who is about to get creamed. A drop goes wrong and Devlin winds up in ER with no signs of recovery. Having given Jimmy his watch with instructions to take good care of it, the Chinese cabdriver returns to his boss' loaded pad and decides to try on "the tuxedo." It turns out to be no ordinary suit, but rather one of the most expensive pieces of defense on the market. This tux enables the wearer to turn into a super-human hero with a penchant for knocking bad guys flat. But the worst of it comes when the C.S.I.'s newest field agent (Jennifer Love Hewitt) mistakes Jimmy for Devlin... and the two must work together to uncover a conspiracy that could threaten the world.

The Tuxedo looks really cute from the previews and does have a few scenes that sparkle. Jennifer and Jackie do have a charisma together, though most of their scenes consist of quarreling or leveling wisecracks at one another. The film opens with a bang -- a haphazard cab driver putting the petal to the metal -- and swiftly becomes a lot of fun when Jason Isaacs intrudes in his debonair James Bond persona. But somewhere along the way the movie begins to loose momentum and by the half point, I wasn't all that interested anymore. I guess because Jackie Chan movies are about two things: comedy and action, and while this has action, the comedy is rather flat. Most of it consists of jokes the audience is supposed to find humorous, but actually finds juvenile or offensive.

The content definitely pushes the line and is heavier than most of Jackie's action capers. Sexual jokes and innuendo abound. Del makes snide references about a professor's "lack" of sexual maturity, comes on to one of the bad guys, and does a lot of bare-back bearing, as well as wears dresses which allow her to employ one of her many charms -- cleavage. Intelligence agents ogle women's' backsides in the field shooting agency, using their camera to zoom in and get a close-up. In a jazz club, we watch scantily clad women shake their hips. Jimmy is supposed to make contact with an agent by complimenting her on her chest (of course, he approaches the wrong woman; later the joke is repeated). The nastiest scene involves a woman luring Jimmy into her hotel room and making sexual advances, half undressing them both before he manages to escape. (Bad guys burst in and Jimmy is forced to kick box in his underpants.)

When Del finds out she's been tricked, she herds him into the bathroom and has him take off the tux at gunpoint, along with another unfortunate guy in the nearest bathroom stall. She leaves both pantless to fend for themselves. Jackie waves his behind in people's faces during a dance number. The violence is pretty standard but there are some truly hideous special effects which come in after watching people down dehydrated water. They literally dry out, their skin losing all of its water and turning into a skeletal, wrinkled mass that's particularly revolting. Later one of the bad guys swallows the poisoned queen bug and is descended on by a mass swarm of insects, which yield a similar response. I've seen some pretty sick stuff in my time, but this takes the cake. The film's opening shot is pretty crude, involving a deer urinating into a beautiful waterfall which flows downstream, goes through various clogs, and is bottled into water.

The Tuxedo does have some snazzy moments, particularly when Jackie and his costar take to the dance floor. But mostly its full of snide remarks, a few interesting gags, and loads of unfunny references. It's supposed to be a gag on James Bond but never quite hits the 007 mark. It's pretty bad when the audience bemoans the absence of the real Clark Devlin.

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