Sing it with me now: He’s a cop with a troubled past! He’s a loose cannon who plays by his own rules! And his new partner is (pick one) a doomed veteran close to retirement, a no-nonsense tightass, a fresh-faced rookie, a tough-but-gorgeous woman, a big slobbery dog, a precocious child, a witless informant, a criminal with a heart of gold…
The buddy cop formula is a tried and true convention of American cinema, and as such easy to poke fun at. Robert De Niro, also a veritable institution these days, is turning over a new leaf making fun of his own tough guy image. Eddie Murphy has done more than his fair share of cop movies and buddy cop movies. Murphy’s first scene as Officer Trey Sellars is a spot-on spoof of every big dramatic buddy cop moment.
And yet Showtime never transcends, bobbing gently at the level of the genre, never straying too far or biting the hand that fed it.
Lt. Mitch Preston (De Niro) is going in for the kill on an undercover drug bust when Trey stumbles and bumbles his way onto the scene. In the resulting melee, Mitch punches out a television camera that gets in his way, and Trey is handcuffed to a fence with his own cuffs.
MAXIS producer Chase Renzi (Rene Russo) capitalizes on Mitch’s front-page outburst to hire him for a new reality show, which to him is just as bad as the assault charges he might otherwise face. Open casting begins for his partner, and Trey immediately goes out for the role. Instead of refusing with an “I work alone!” Mitch settles for “Don’t get in my way” as he attempts to unravel what, other than Trey, went wrong with his sting.
One of the bad guys has been arrested, but the other escaped with some help from a very large gun. Thus commences the standard drugs and guns subplot, complete with bleached-blond Eurotrash criminal mastermind. Actually, Caesar Vargas is meant to be Cuban, I believe, but it amounts to the same character. You know, the one with the vaguely effeminate menacing accent.
There’s a good script in here somewhere, about Hollywood’s driving need to fit everything into a mold, and we catch glimpses of it when the producers redecorate Mitch’s apartment and provide the cops with new cars to suit their new public images. But even Hollywood skewering Hollywood is a cliché, especially when being done by Hollywood stereotypes. Trey is a struggling actor! Mitch does pottery – badly! Beneath it all, these aren’t three-dimensional characters forced into clichés – they’re one-dimensional characters playing different one-dimensional characters. Trey is a diamond in the rough who can’t take things seriously, playing an earnest fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants rookie, and Mitch is a gruff but loveable old coot forced to play the staid by-the-book veteran.
The story is credited to Jorge Saralegui, a first-time writer but the producer of such fine cinematic achievements as Red Planet, Queen of the Damned, and The Time Machine. Keith Sharon, one of the three credited screenwriters, is also a first-timer. The other screenwriters, Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (whom fanboys will also know as the creators of Smallville), along with director Tom Dey, dabbled in the buddy cop genre with 2000’s Shanghai Noon. They know the conventions, but it’s one thing to tease the genre’s conventions from inside (as in Scream) and quite another to just exist, self-aware, in the genre.
With the teeth taken out of the buddy cop satire, the climate was ripe to rip on reality shows or the savage exploitative nature of television news programs. But those opportunities go right by in favor of a TVQ lesson with William Shatner and a confessional montage where Murphy preens, De Niro sulks and spouts cop catchphrases, and the plot doesn’t thicken.
It doesn’t have to, because you know where it’s going. Inevitably, the movie about buddy cop movies turns into a buddy cop movie, with the two suspended officers taking the law into their own hands for the big showdown. The callback resolution is as rote as the winking opening audition scene.
One reason so many Americans watch reality shows is the unpredictability factor; even when you’re pretty sure you know what’s coming next, there’s always the possibility that it could go in the opposite direction. Routine calls on COPS are often just some drunk crazy rednecks breaking the law, but they might end up Shocking Moments Caught On Tape.
Showtime is just the opposite. It’s calculated and choreographed, clearly following a formula, albeit an entertaining one. You know exactly where it’s going, you’ll have a laugh or two getting there, but in the end it’s the same-old, same-old. De Niro is affable, Murphy is manic, cool and eager to please. Showtime may have all the right ingredients, but they’re still prepackaged.
Reviewed by Sarah Stanek
