Jackie Chan's 'Tuxedo' is badly stitched together
Jackie Chan, the only action star in the universe who can look appealing in a Hooters T-shirt, is back, but in a movie that isn't worthy of him.
"The Tuxedo," an action comedy sloppily directed by newcomer Kevin Donovan, provides Chan with a nifty plot gimmick: He's a chauffeur whose inner tough guy only emerges when wearing his secret-agent boss's souped-up, gadget-laden tuxedo. The gimmick, though, is all we get. There's no cohesive plot, no chemistry with co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt, and very few laughs.
There are, however, lots and lots of jokes about Hewitt's bosom (memo to screenwriters: The comic impact of the word "rack" is limited at best), scenes of people shriveling up and dying after drinking specially engineered water and a mysterious cameo by James Brown. Yes, that James Brown.
As for the plot — well, it resembles something cut into shreds, then taped back together any old way. Jimmy Tong (Chan), when we first meet him, is a mild-mannered cabbie who drives like a maniac and loves, from afar, a woman who works in an art gallery. But, quicker than you can say "What's the deal with that Hooters T-shirt?," he's been recruited for a new job: chauffeur to the very suave Clark Devlin, a millionaire with a fabulous tux.
When Devlin gets hurt in a mysterious accident, Jimmy dons the tux, teams up with rookie agent Del Blaine (Hewitt), and saves the world. At least I think he does — it's not entirely clear exactly who and what he's fighting (except that they're really nasty), nor does it matter much.
Donovan, previously a commercials director, seems lost in the feature-film format. (Perhaps it's not entirely his fault; the film definitely has an editing-room-meddling vibe to it.) Some of the scenes drag on forever, such as an unfortunate moment when Jimmy endlessly twitches his booty in the face of hapless spectators, or a scene in which Hewitt, in a floaty turquoise dress, walks in slow motion past a swimming pool, looking exactly like a low-budget perfume commercial. And characters oddly drop in and out of the movie — early on, we're introduced to a fellow who seems to be Jimmy's sidekick, but then never see him again.
The only reason to watch this mess is to see the ever-amazing Chan, who's still boyish at 48, although it's getting a bit cringe-inducing to repeatedly see him slammed onto hard surfaces. Here, he performs a nifty series of kicks with one leg in and one leg out of his tuxedo pants (only the leg in the pants can kick; the other one just hops), does acrobatics with a noose around his neck, climbs a silo and nimbly stays out of the way of Hewitt, whose action chops are a tad, um, limited. (At one point, in a fight scene, she makes a mystifying noise, not unlike a whale vocalization. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.)
Chan's still a wonder, but "The Tuxedo" definitely doesn't fit.
Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com.
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