Showtime – It’s lucky it has the cast

‘Buddy cop’ movies are nothing new.  They have been around long before 2002’s ‘Showtime’ and they have been popping up ever so often since.  They all revolve around a pair of mismatched police officers, forced to overcome their differences and character flaws in order to solve a crime for the greater good. ‘Showtime’ adheres to every single cliché and trope associated with this format.

However – and it’s a BIG ‘however’ – what ‘Showtime’ has that few other similar films do, is its A-list cast, namely Robert DeNiro and Eddie Murphy.  Just like every other ‘buddy cop’ film, DeNiro is the ‘straight-laced’ one and Murphy is the ‘wild and wacky’ one.  The set-up is nothing new, but the execution is a lot of fun.

When DeNiro (and I’m just not going to bother with ‘character names,’ seeing as it felt like I was simply watching the actors and NOT any on-screen variation of them!) gets caught on national TV shooting a cameraman’s camera, the television network threatens to sue the police force, or make a reality TV show out of it.  Naturally, what makes the best TV is plenty of conflict, therefore (through one twist of fate or another) DeNiro gets himself paired up with a person who is effectively the polar opposite of everything he stands for.

Because the two actors are so good at what they do, they bounce off each other just perfectly and the banter back and forth makes the film worth watching on its own.  And that’s almost all I have to say about ‘Showtime.’ If you like DeNiro or Murphy, then you should enjoy it.  It’s funny and that should be all enough for you if you’re sitting down to watch a ‘buddy cop’ film that’s blatantly marketed for laughs.

Of course it’s not perfect.  Because it’s a cop movie there has to be a crime to solve.  However, the story/banter between the two leads is so good that I almost felt it didn’t need the overarching ‘crime element’ to it to really add anything.  So there’s a bad-guy they have to track down and, along the way, there are various car chases and shoot outs for them to get involved in.  These – naturally – aren’t funny and could have been taken right out of any generic action film.

Luckily, the ‘story’ doesn’t drag down the comedy too often and, going back to what I said before, it’s worth watching just for the laughs that the two leads provide.  And, for any of us long-term ‘Star Trek’ fans, William Shatner makes an appearance which is true comedy gold (just wish he was in it a bit more!).

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that