Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002

(click here to skip to this movie's rating)

It's funny; I was watching the "Starz" free preview this weekend, and caught a few minutes of a twentysomething Jackie Chan in The Young Master, from 1978 (yes, Johnny, that means Jackie is purty dang old to still be able to chop socky the way he usually does). As hilariously bad as that movie was, it runs circles around The Tuxedo. Trust me; those are big circles. THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**) [aww geez, do I have to? sigh...] Jimmy Tong (Jackie Chan) is a NYC cabbie; he's not that good a driver, but he can get you there in a jif. After Jimmy gets the attention of the mysterious Steena (Debi Mazar), she hires him to work for the even more mysterious Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs) as Devlin's limo driver. Steena gives Jimmy a list of Rules he must follow, with the number one rule being that Jimmy must never touch Devlin's preciously mysterious Tuxedo. Of course, he does just that, which results in a case of mistaken identity when the "how in the hell did they manage to mis-write this character so quickly?" pseudo-scientist/pseudo-new agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is assigned to assist "Devlin". Wait, it gets worse: [sweet mother of ghod, is it not over yet?] Jimmy-as-Devlin and whatever-she-is Del go up against the mysteriously banal water terrorist [yes, you read that right] Banning (Ritchie Coste) and, oh please just put me out of my misery... THE UPSHOT I won't be long; this movie wasn't worth the keystrokes. The Tuxedo wasn't just bad; it was, as my friend David Cross would call it, "Hungry-Man portions of bad". What a waste of Jackie Chan. It was almost as if the director was scared that no one would believe that Chan was still the kickass karate/stuntman he was in movies like Shanghai Noon, Rush Hour, and Battle In The Bronx. Chan's best asset in American movies - his ability to mix martial arts excellence with comic touches - were all but absent here. There were a few flashes of interesting stunts, but nothing to keep your attention for very long. Certainly, not as long as it took to notice how very bad the rest of the movie was. Between the muted stuntwork and lame martial arts, gut-wrenchingly bad script, directing-by-the-numbers [what was up with those doofus closeups?] and caricature-like "acting", no one, not even the affable Chan, escaped unscathed from the drenching excrement that was The Tuxedo. THE "ETHNIC FACTOR"    [ObDisclaimer: They Are Not A Monolith] (WARNING: **slight spoilers contained below**) Remember Romeo Must Die, the 2000 flick where an Asian man was matched with a non-Asian woman, and Romance was implied? It's baaaaack...but here, with an even more "taboo" implication: potential Romance with a White woman. ooh. Of course, neither Romance ever came to fruition; and this movie was so bad, I doubt a sequel will be made [I know; who'm I kidding?] So it remains to be seen whether Jimmy will ever explain what exactly that facial expression meant at the end; but I have to wonder what, exactly, Hollywood fears about Asian male sexuality...hmm... BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE Damn, The Tuxedo was painful. This flick's so bad, even Chan's signature outtakes were dull. THE TUXEDO:   back to top And that's the way I see it. Rose "Bams" Cooper 3BlackChicks Review™ Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002 EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com    ICQ: 7760005 http://www.3blackchicks.com/