DVD Review (R2): RENO 911! MIAMI – THE MOVIE! UNCUT!
I
write this review with a complete detachment to Reno 911, the allegedly much-loved TV show (shown on Comedy Central in the US and FX here in the UK) that this film is born from. I’ve never seen an episode of the show and, to be absolutely honest, I’ve never seen a single moment of footage from it either. Nor had I seen so much as a trailer or a clip of this movie spin-off. Believe it or not, despite this being the age of the “internet” and the fact that nobody can allegedly go into a movie “cold” anymore, I sat down to watch this on a completely blank slate.
I’d been called into work on my day off (one of my ‘clients’ was very poorly and they needed someone to sit with him!) and was going into work away from home so I didn’t have access to my DVD collection. Knowing that I was going to be sat for an extremely long period of time without much to do, and whilst said ill-client slept, I decided to make a pitstop on my way in and grab some DVDs and pull my portable DVD player from the boot of the car. Picking up Canadian Bacon and Das Boot: The Director’s Cut for the grand sum of £1 each and Alan Parker’s Midnight Express for the bargain basement price of £3, I glanced across at the cover for this very movie – to give it it’s full UK release title, Reno 911! : Miami! The Movie – Uncut! – and thought “Ooh, looks like Super Troopers! I loved Super Troopers!” I read the back and thought “Yeah, I’ll give it a go. Even if it doesn’t make me laugh out loud even once, it’ll pass the time and then I can bring it back tomorrow and just tell them it didn’t work and get my money back!”
I became a police officer because my doctor told me I needed to get out of the house more.
As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, I’ve never seen the show so I cannot write this review as a comparison piece as to what translated well from small-screen to big and which ‘regular’ characters turn up and which ones don’t. I couldn’t even, if I tried, write about whether this film lived up to it’s trailer (very few comedies do, for me!) as I’d not even seen that at the time of viewing! All, I can tell you is this… The DVD remains unreturned at the time of writing and will remain so as long as I have DVDs!
This hotel reminds me of a place you’d want to go to get a good ol’ fashioned raping or a down-home murder!
Opening on a sterling gag involving a “star” cameo (executive producer Danny DeVito) and a great ‘falling asleep behind the wheel of a moving car’ joke, the film follows the mishap-soaked adventures of a group of thoroughly incompetent officers from the Reno Police Department, namely short-shorts obsessed/closet gay Lieutenant Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) and his team of deputies; Deputy James Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui), Deputy Cherisha Kimball (Mary Birdsong), Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant), Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver), Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendi McLendon-Covey), Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash) and Deputy S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough). Thinking they have been invited to a police convention in Miami, the gang head out of state only to find themselves locked out of the conference centre where it’s being held and where a biochemical terrorist attack leaves these eight imbecilic officers as the only cops available to patrol the streets of Miami, whilst 2,000 police officers lie poisoned inside.
Oh my God, if I’ve been stabbed, I’m gonna be so pissed!
Like any film where improvisation is at the heart of the film, there’s a heavy ratio of hit-and-miss material. A detour for two of the characters into the mansion of Suge Knight in answer to a “noise complaint” during a wild party is neither sold particularly well or that funny in the first place. Nor is the subplot involving Deputy Clementine Johnson and her search to find the “mystery man” tattooed on her breasts. However, it’s never the weight of the gags that “miss” that counts, it’s the degree of regularity and the weight of the ones that “hit” that you need to pay attention to.
You know you’re driving, right?
For me, this film hit the ball out of the park with a consistency I’ve not found in a long time for an “out-and-out” comedy film. The bit with the whale, the bit with the sex scene, the bit with the alligator (Oh! My! God! That bit was fucking awesome!), the bit with all the star cameos (DeVito, Paul Rudd channelling Al Pacino, The Rock taking the mick out of himself, Paul “Pee Wee Herman” Reubens and Patton Oswalt!), the bit with the stupid “twist” at the end and the golf-cart chase and silly shoot-out finale.
Who gave ‘Topless’ a gun?
I laughed out loud again and again and again. What more can you ask for with a comedy? I genuinely had a really good time with this film and it was as noteworthy a cult comedy experience as when I encountered Super Troopers for the first time. Obviously, had I watched five seasons worth of these guys before taking on this film or had I had the film hyped up beyond belief via the internet, who knows whether I’d have felt the same as I do having gone in “cold”. Nor would I be that enamoured towards it, should they – as the rumourmill suggests at the moment – turn it into a cheap straight-to-DVD franchise in the vein of the Police Academy movies! But all I can say is that, having stepped into this film on the off-chance of it killing an hour and a half of my time, I had a blast and came away with a whole host of quotable dialogue and favourite moments to try and sell verbally (and probably badly) to my friends whilst drunk in the pub… You know? Never doing it justice, like “There’s this dude and he’s trying to push a whale and he falls inside…” That sort of thing?
DVD EXTRAS:
Just Plain Smutty: Commentary By Deputies Garcia, Johnson, Jones and Kimball
Wildly Inappropriate: Commentary By Lt. Dangle and Deputies Junior, Wiegel and Williams
Politically Incorrect: Commentary by director/writer Robert Ben Grant and writers Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenny-Silver
6 outrageous extended scenes
Hilarious “Public Service Announcements”
Fox Movie Channel Presents: The World Premiere!
Check this out though! It’s a real cult, comedic gem well worth a look! Funny stuff, I assure you! If you loved Super Troopers then you’ll dig the crap out of this!
4 Responses to “DVD Review (R2): RENO 911! MIAMI – THE MOVIE! UNCUT!”
*sigh* oh The Rock…..what a piece of…..oh, and this flick is pretty funny, too. Not the best cop spoof I’ve ever seen though. That honor belongs solely to Hot Fuzz. One of the perks of being on my college’s film committee is all the free swag, and as I type this, I’m looking at my massive Hot Fuzz banner, the kind they hang in the theater lobby. God, this ****er is HUGE:)
Glad you do it for something other than the ****ing love of movies Kristina LOL!
I’m really surprised you liked it so much given that you’ve never seen the show and probably aren’t familiar with the American show that it parodies (Cops). You would probably like it even more if you spent some time in the US and got to put it more in context.
Trackbacks
What's Your Opinion?