Showtime.

Review #1078: Showtime.

Cast: 
Robert De Niro (Detective Mitch Preston), Eddie Murphy (Officer Trey Sellars), Rene Russo (Chase Renzi), Frankie Faison (Captain Winship), Pedro Damián (Cesar Vargas), Drena De Niro (Annie), William Shatner (Himself), Mos Def (Lazy Boy), and Peter Jacobson (Brad Slocum) Directed by Tom Dey.

Review: 
Showtime manages to read out like a studio notes version of what it wanted to be. It tries to have its moments to make fun of the buddy cop structure along with its moments about reality TV, but it all crashes down to mediocrity in part because it never really takes off. The chemistry between De Niro and Murphy is better than something like Hollywood Homicide (#1075) (which also depicted a cop who wanted to be an actor, only done less funny), but it is fairly obvious that the film doesn't give them much to really do. Both of them deliver okay performances, with Murphy generating a few more laughs than De Niro, but I didn't find myself laughing too particularly hard with it. Russo does a decent job with what she's given, with the rest of the cast delivering okay performances that don't really come off as detrimental to the film, although Damian can't lift the material to make his villain role anything good. The film isn't painful or intolerable by any means, but it also isn't anything that rises to anything particularly good. It doesn't help when the movie at one point starts throwing out lines from other films (such as Taxi Driver - #990) that only serves to remind me of what I'm not watching. Its beats with the plot are a bit by the numbers, and nothing comes off as a big particular surprise with even its action sequences seeming by the numbers. The parts with Shatner playing himself end up feeling like the most amusing parts of the film in part because they seem offbeat and interesting (with a T. J. Hooker reference, of course) compared to the other parts that come off as routine and a bit sloppy. At 95 minutes, the film isn't too much of a chore, but it isn't anything that will come off as particularly rewarding for most. If you watch as something just for entertainment and nothing more, you might get a few moments here and there, but you won't find yourself particularly loving it.

Overall, I give it 5 out of 10 stars.