Rating: 1/10
Running Time: 90 minutes
UK Certificate: 12a
If you only see one movie this year, pray to God it's not this one. The entire film is basically a vehicle for relentless small-minded racism it isn't funny, it's just plain sickening. There are plenty of run-of-the-mill action comedies out there that bomb purely because they're not funny, but at least the vast majority of them aren't downright offensive.
I could go on but I won't. I've made myself clear, so I'll summarise the lack of plot, and call this a day.
Martin Lawrence plays Earl, a thieving, lying, white-hater who boasts of his disapproval of inter-racial relationships (“unless it's the man who's black”) and falsely accuses policeman Hank (Steve Zahn) of dishing out a Rodney King-style assault. Hank ends up jobless, banged up in prison for 6 months, dumped by his girlfriend and, worst of all, landed with working alongside the utterly intolerable Earl who spends his time either behaving like a non-ironic non-funny Ali G, or running around, repeatedly shouting “what the problem is?” which is even more annoying than Hank's ridiculous moustache. They wind up working as security guards trying to solve some mystery or other, the details of which the film-makers didn't care enough about to bother to make entirely clear.
It's Got: No-brain action sequences and a detestable script.
It Needs: To stop falling back on racial intolerance in a misguided attempt to gain extremely cheap laughs.
Summary
The most unashamedly racist piece of cinema Ive ever had the misfortune of watching.