Showtime (PG-13) ★★½

A no-nonsense veteran police detective gets blackmailed by a floundering television network into starring in a reality-TV cop show. Chaos ensues when he's joined by a hungry actor/beat cop who proceeds to annoy the hell out of him. Cameras rolling, they bicker, bond and eventually solve the crime.

Story

After 20 years with the LAPD, Det. Mitch Preston (Robert De Niro) just wants to catch the crooks, finish the paperwork and retreat to his mundane life at home, where he eats TV dinners and pursues his hobby of making bad pottery. Patrolman Trey Sellars (Eddie Murphy) really wants to be an actor--he's only a cop because he made a lousy waiter. When Sellars bungles Preston's undercover case and media hounds catch it all on tape, the irate Preston shoots up a news camera that gets in his face. Over-caffeinated network exec Chase Renzi (Rene Russo), upon seeing the damning evidence that could have killed her cameraman, is captivated by Preston's complete lack of charm and convinces her superior she can save his crappy network by pairing Preston and Sellars up on a reality show. As expected, Preston is reluctant--and even more so when he's forced to take the mugging Sellars as his partner. The two take impromptu acting lessons from iconic actor/director William Shatner (playing himself), and set off to attract an audience, boost the ratings, become celebrities and get the bad guys in a televised reality christened Showtime. Meanwhile, the evil Cesar Vargas (Pedro Damian)--whom we know is evil 'cause he hides in the shadows, he's flashy and well groomed, and he mumbles in an unfathomable Third World/ European accent--is stockpiling guns powerful enough to knock down houses and blow the doors off a Brinks truck.

Acting

The movie offers a few good yuks--a coke-sniffing dog, an unprecedented cameo by jive-rhyming lawyer Johnnie Cochran and William Shatner satirizing William Shatner (who does this better than anybody else satirizing William Shatner). Unfortunately we've seen a lot of his funniest stuff, like the scene in which he demonstrates how to roll over a car hood cop-style, in the previews. Rene Russo gives an effective, souped-up Lethal Weapon-type performance with her hyper, pushy, fast-talking network exec desperate to make her name in the industry. De Niro's straight-man comedy is in his facial expressions--or lack thereof--and Murphy is…well, Murphy. It's their first outing together, and they play off each other like a foul-mouthed version of Abbott and Costello (guess who plays who?). We've seen De Niro play grumpy (Midnight Run) and Murphy play obnoxious (almost everything) before. But, as you may suspect, it's their grade-A chemistry that holds this badly stitched, predictable though occasionally funny flick together--especially in regards to the jokes on Hollywood and the current bounty of reality TV.

Direction

You can smell the gags and The Odd Couple-versus-Goldfinger plot unfolding a million miles away. You just know Preston is hiding a gun inside that Big Gulp when he goes undercover to investigate a pawn shop, and you know Vargas will make bad-guy errors in judgment, like staging a robbery in downtown L.A. the day after he's confronted by our star cops in a populated disco. But that may lead you to wonder why the police--who are likewise not presented as being particularly bright in this movie--weren't trailing him, as Vargas is the prime suspect in the gun-trafficking subplot. Some of the comedy borders on satire, but isn't played up enough for you to tell if it was meant that way or not. The action scenes are so badly edited, it's hard to tell who's chasing whom until the camera cuts back to Murphy's toothy grin and a cement-faced De Niro shooting out his car window. And speaking of commercial-laden reality TV, the product placement in this movie is shameless--we get a full-length commercial for Apple Computers, played not once, but twice.

Bottom Line

No doubt, you'll laugh here and there at Showtime, but you've seen/heard/smelled it all before. It's strictly matinee material--or a DVD rental.