Paul Blart: Mall Cop - Blu-ray
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Sony / 2009 / 91 Minutes / PG / Street Date: May 19, 2009
I have to admit upfront I have a big, bear-hugging soft spot for Kevin James. The comedic actor has a certain innocent charm and genuine likeability that reminds me of great comedic talents like John Candy, John Belushi and Chris Farley. His antics never seem to be mean-spirited or vulgar and he’s never reluctant to let himself become the brunt of the joke — often jumping (quite literally) into self-deprecating routines with broad physical humor and slapstick bits. As the star of the long-running and underrated The King of Queens, he demonstrated he could easily carry a weekly sitcom, but his fledgling film career to date has been less impressive. He’s typically been relegated to either playing second banana to people like Will Smith (Hitch) and Adam Sandler (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry) or doing bit parts in other movies. Now, through the courtesy of Sandler’s Happy Madison imprimatur, he’s gotten his first starring vehicle in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a movie which he also co-wrote with Nick Bakay (The Dennis Miller Show). In keeping with his own standup style, Paul Blart: Mall Cop is decidedly inoffensive and family-friendly; a harmless diversion that doesn’t pretend to be anything more.
 On the down side, the film is anchored to an intriguing if somewhat familiar premise (with whiffs of the recent Seth Rogen vehicle Observe and Report) that sort of misses a lot of great opportunities for even bigger laughs. It seems as if James and everyone else in the movie was trying a bit too hard to play it safe and keep the movie just this side of the PG-13 rating in order to guarantee a wider audience. As a result, the end product lacks the cutting edge and wit to make it as memorable as something like last year’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall or even Role Models. Paul Blart: Mall Cop plays like … well, a light and breezy TV sitcom. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing — it’s just at this stage in his career, Kevin James deserves better and should be aspiring to something more. As it stands now the movie could have simply been renamed Doug Heffernan: Mall Cop and I don’t think too many people would have noticed the absence of Carrie and her basement-dwelling father, Arthur, or that Doug had somehow traded in his brown IPS uniform for rent-a-cop duds.With dreams of becoming a New Jersey State Trooper, the affable Paul Blart (Kevin James) has a few personal obstacles standing in the way — he’s overweight, out-of-shape and hypoglycemic. So when he tries, yet again, to qualify for the coveted position, he can’t even complete the basic training without passing out due to low blood sugar. But life goes on as Blart returns to the comfort of home where he lives with his enabling mother (Shirley Knight) and doting daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez). Although he’s disappointed about losing out on the state trooper gig, he’s content to return to his longtime position as security guard at the West Orange Pavilion Mall. Dressed in full uniform and riding a mall-issued Segway personal transportation device, he proudly motorvates to work where he takes his job seriously. Sadly, no one else thinks maintaining the safety of transient shoppers is as important as Blart, a ten-year veteran of the job. His fellow security guards are just there to get a paycheck and they wish he’d do the same. As the busy Christmas season approaches, a new kiosk worker named Amy (Jayma Mays) catches Blart’s eye, and he makes a bumbling attempt to ask her out. Shy and self-conscious about his weight, Blart is obviously smitten with Amy and she takes an initial liking to him.
 During a gathering of mall employees one night, Blart mistakenly downs a pitcher of Margaritas after attempting to win a nacho-eating contest, which sets him on an unexpected drinking binge that results in an embarrassing encounter with Amy. When they see each other again at work on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving that is typically the busiest shopping day of the Christmas season, Amy is noticeably aloof. Blart fears he may have scared her off for good … but he’ll soon get a chance to prove his mettle. As the mall prepares to close after the busy day, several employees rush to cash their checks at the bank and Blart offers to look after the game arcade while his buddy joins them. It’s at this point that a band of thieves who had been posing as “Santa’s Helpers” working at the holiday display clear out the remaining shoppers and take over the mall. Amy is trapped inside the bank and taken hostage along with other employees as the gang hatches its plan to steal all the credit card codes from the lucrative shopping day. What’s worse is the ringleader turns out to be a guy named Veck Sims (Keir O’Donnell), who was just hired as a security guard trainee working alongside Blart. Sims has planned this scheme from the get-go, only he wasn’t expecting the gun-shy and weaponless Blart to pose much of a threat.Sims has assembled a gang of fearless extreme sports types who zip around the mall using bikes, skateboards or a skill known as “free running” — jumping around, through and under things — to collect the coveted credit card information from all of the mall stores. They systematically collect the data while Sims holds the mall employees hostage inside the bank to keep the cops outside at bay. But the one wild card here is Blart, who also gets trapped inside with them and then passes up a chance to escape when he realizes that Amy is one of the hostages. In an obvious nod to Die Hard, Blart becomes the experienced security guard on the inside, using his cell phone to communicate with the other guards and police outside about the gang and their intentions. Frustrated that Blart is attempting to foil his plan, Sims sends his minions to track the security guard down and remove him from the equation — but Blart’s commitment to his duty and his affection for Amy drive him to fight back against all odds. When Blart’s daughter inadvertently gets added to the hostage pool, Blart goes on a First Blood rampage, systematically taking out Sims’ cohorts, one by one. In the end, Blart has to prove to himself, his daughter and to Amy that he can overcome his own obstacles and finally succeed.
 With obvious swipes from several action films, Paul Blart: Mall Cop is far from original. But it’s a well-meaning premise that’s family-friendly and, for the most part, credible. The idea of using the extreme sports fanatics seemed a bit trite and pointless at first, but they offer an amusing contrast to Blart’s seemingly incompetent and ineffective security measures — to wit, buzzing around on a Segway issuing “speeding tickets” to elderly men in motorized wheelchairs. Blart is all heart, and as played by Kevin James he’s both sympathetic and appealing. He makes you want to root for him to win, even if you can see the pat ending coming a mile away. The supporting cast here also does fine work, especially Jayma Mays as Blart’s doe-eyed love interest; Raini Rodriguez as Blart’s devoted daughter; and Keir O’Donnell (Wedding Crashers) as Blart’s greedy nemesis. But even at a scant 91 minutes, the movie feels padded and strains for laughs. What could have been a full-blown shopping spree ended up feeling like a nominal gift certificate. The Video: How Does The Disc Look?
The film’s original 1.85:1 aspect ratio is presented in a solid high-definition transfer compressed with the AVC video CODEC. While the scenes that take place inside the mall lack some detail and depth — probably due to the natural lighting within — overall the image quality here is quite good. Although the picture sometimes skews a little on the soft side, particularly the interior mall sequences, there’s still the expected amount of film grain and the images remain sharp, clean and well-defined. Color reproduction and hues are strong and vibrant throughout, with colors that are well saturated and never bloom, bleed or smear. Details such as the intricate patterns in the mall’s tiled floors and the individual strands of hair within the various weaves Amy sells in her kiosk all pop off the screen and look remarkably crisp. Black levels remained deep, dark and inky and there were no signs of compression artifacts, specks, or blemishes. Flesh tones also looked natural and nicely-rendered. Overall, a very good video presentation.
The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
Matching its video counterpart, the lossless Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track on this BD is active, aggressive and ambient. There’s plenty of discrete and directional content delivered to all six channels throughout the film, with deep and resonant bass coming from the subwoofer and clean midrange and high end cutting through the front and rear mixes. Surrounds are well-used to provide both a dimensional quality within the mall setting and also to add some depth to the original score by rock legend Waddy Wachtel — known for his work with James Taylor, Tom Waits and Warren Zevon, among others. The movie also uses a great selection of classic rock songs — presumably picked by Kevin James since he and I are of the same era — that are given a full and ambient soundstage. Amusing scenes are built around Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein,” Survivor’s “I Can’t Hold Back” and, most notably, Kiss’ “Detroit Rock City,” which Paul Blart attempts to mimic on the game “Rock Band” in the mall arcade. Dialogue always remains clear and concise through the center-channel mix and the songs fill out both the front stereo and rear discrete channels. Overall, a very good and resonant audio presentation.
The optional subtitles are in English SDH, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.
The Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
Paul Blart: Mall Cop arrives on BD with a bevy of bonus material beginning with a feature-length screen-specific audio commentary track with star Kevin James and producer Todd Garner. The two friends have a nice, easy rapport and offer some amusing and interesting insights into the project. James explains how he came up with the idea for the character and film (which he co-wrote) and the duo talks about how they shot the movie in an actual mall in Burlington, Massachusetts near Boston, often while stores were open and shoppers were milling around. Also of note is how James attempted to keep the movie PG-rated and how he wanted to include a lot of friends, family members and his favorite music in the film. It’s a breezy and enjoyable track.
The first of several featurettes on the disc is titled Kevin James: Not Your Average Mall Cop (4:58, 1080p) and offers a basic overview on the movie with its star/co-writer and other members of the cast and crew chiming in on what it was like to work with the former King of Queens. Action Sports Junkies (6:19, 1080p) is a fun look at the extreme sports athletes who play the members of the gang that attempts to take over the mall in the film. To that end, Stunts (10:31, 1080p) focuses on all of the unique stunt work — done by both the extreme sports team and Kevin James himself — in the film. The Mall (4:22, 1080p) is a brief throwaway in which cast and crew members discuss the popularity of malls and how they have become an iconic hangout for people. On Set With Mike “Rooftop” Escamilla (5:44, 1080p) follows one of the most daring and athletic of the extreme sports gang who does a combination of something called “free running” and “parkour” to jump around, through and over objects with seemingly little effort. Fun On Set (6:03, 1080p) is a neat behind-the-scenes look at the production and various bloopers and blunders with the cast. Mike V. vs. Mall Cop (2:35, 1080p) is a funny bit in which the skateboarding member of the extreme sports gang antagonizes Kevin James’ character by “tagging” the mall and the mall cop with spray paint. Mall Cop Response (1:46, 1080p) is a brief scene of Kevin James telling Mike V. about the error of his ways. Free Running vs. Parkour (3:10) is another look at the freestyle running and jumping skills of two of the gang members. Thoughts with Kevin James (2:14, 1080p) is another filler bit with the star rambling about nonsensical things, and finally, Sugar (1:53, 1080p) follows the aforementioned Mike “Rooftop” Escamilla racing through the mall to bring Kevin James sugar for his coffee. While some of this is cute, a little goes a long way and there seems to be a lot of needless redundancy.
Next is a collection of ten deleted scenes (12:30 aggregate, 1080p) including Online Dating, Black Ice for the PT, Lost Little Boy, It All Makes Sense Now, What Do We Need the Numbers For, Brains and Brawn, Translate My Text, Pahud and Paul, We Are the Law and Snowglobe. Admittedly, a couple of these are funny and could have been included in the film, especially Lost Little Boy wherein Paul Blart attempts to help a kid who’s been separated from his mother.
In addition to the standard BD promo, the disc includes trailers for Click, The House Bunny, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Ghostbusters, 50 First Dates, Hitch, RV and Hancock. The BD also includes downloadable content for players that are BD-Live enabled, a feature called CineChat which allows viewers to send text messages to friends while watching the movie (something I’m not sure is all that necessary), and a digital copy DVD that allows you to transfer the movie onto portable media devices via a Windows-based PC, Apple’s video iPod, or Sony’s PSP.
The 91-minute film is divided into sixteen chapters.
Final Thoughts
Although Paul Blart: Mall Cop has its heart in the right place and is ultimately harmless, it doesn’t provide enough laughs to sustain a feature-length movie. Despite Kevin James’ considerable talents, it feels more like a half-hour sitcom plot that’s been stretched out over three episodes. Despite decent video and audio presentations and an ample if redundant collection of bonus material, this BD is only marginally recommended as a rental for fans of Kevin James and the really curious.
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