THE TUXEDO (2002)  *

Reviewed 9/28/02

THE TUXEDO is the kind of movie that makes one wonder if anyone involved was interested in the film beyond a paycheck because the final product feels like as much pride went into it as in shoveling cow manure.   Jackie Chan should know better.  Since obtaining success in the States in the late 1990s, Chan has begun alternating between American and Asian productions, and it seems these days, he puts most of his effort into his Hong Kong movies.  Part of the problem is that he trusts his American producers to know what American audiences want from him, but only in an deranged alternate universe, could anyone want to be subjected to THE TUXEDO, certainly the nadir of Chan’s late career.

In the story, suave and sexy superspy Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs doing his best James Bond) hires cabbie Jimmy Tong (Chan) to be his new chauffeur, but when an attempt on Devlin’s life sends him to the hospital, Devlin tells Tong to don his tuxedo, a high-tech superweapon that allows the wearer to perform tasks as diverse as kung fu fighting to singing and dancing like James Brown (who makes yet another gratuitous movie cameo, probably for alimony payments).  Tong assumes Devlin’s identity for no apparent reason and is partnered with brainy government agent novice, Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt).   They go up against corporate villain Diedrich Banning (Ritchie Coster), who has had his mad scientist, Dr. Simms (a wasted Peter Stormare), invent dehydrating water (yes, that is as stupid as it sounds).

In the latest attempt to team Chan up with a partner in a calculated attempt to broaden audience demographics, we get, God forbid, Jennifer Love Hewitt.  The former “Party of Five” star has made a career of choosing awful movies to appear in and then helping to ruin them further.  She does the same with THE TUXEDO.  Hewitt looks like one of those long-haired, narrow-faced Afghan hounds except they are not lathered in makeup.  She may be prettier than Chan’s other partners, Chris Tucker and Owen Wilson, but Wilson is infinitely funnier and Tucker… okay, Tucker and Hewitt are equally annoying.  In what must have been someone’s idea of a vengeful joke, the filmmakers leave in an outtake in the end credits where Chan complains about Hewitt wasting film and everyone’s time by laughing in the middle of scenes.  Jason Isaacs, who has always been a bit stiff as an actor, is the film’s only grace note.  In the little screen time he has, Isaacs makes Clark Devlin the only recognizably human character in the entire movie.

This is director Kevin Donovan’s first feature and if there is any divine justice in the cosmos, it will be his last.   The action scenes are shot so tight and are so ineptly edited, one cannot tell what is going on, much less appreciate the fluidity of movement or spectacular choreography common in other Chan films.  THE TUXEDO is a totally incoherent and slapdash comedy, worse than any unfunny Mel Brooks movie.  If the screenwriters were insane, that would not be surprising.  The characters’ names sound like something only a dyslexic mother could come up with – Del Blaine?  Diedrich Banning?   THE TUXEDO goes through the most ludicrous contortions to make a joke and still manages to flub it.  In a plot move I’m still puzzling over, Del Blaine gives the baddie the super-tux at the end for no apparent reason except for the non-narrative one that Banning and Tong can have a final (alas really dull) martial arts showdown.  A good editor would leave scene after dispensable scene on the cutting room floor, but then the movie would be 10-minutes long.