Held Up

HELD UP (2000) *1/2 Jamie Foxx, Nia Long, Barry Corbin, John Cullum, Jake Busey, Michael Shamus Wiles, Sarah Paulson, Eduardo Yanez, Julie Hagerty. (Dir: Steve Rash) Jamie Foxx is a definite up and coming star in the making.

Witness his eponymous WB tv series, his stint on the ensemble Fox hit, 'In Living Color' and last year's dramatic acting debut in Oliver Stone's bone-crunching look at pro football as a cocksure, divaesque quarterback in 'Any Given Sunday.' That's what makes it all the more difficult to figure out why he squandered his naturally given gift in this lame fish-out-of-water comedy.

Foxx stars as a put-upon guy named Mike who's traveling cross country with his sexy girlfriend Rae (the luscious Long, equally wasted) only to wind up in a podunk backwater Arizona desert town, North Butte. After a quarrel due to Rae learning Mike has spent nearly every dime into the vintage Stuedebaker they're tooling around in leads a seriously angry Rae to leave Mike to his own resources as she bums a ride in a pick-up of good ol' boys to head back to the local airport for the first plane back home to Chicago.

Chagrined Mike winds up facing a firecracker string of bad luck from getting his classic ride carjacked, to being left with fifty bucks and finally being held up in the convenience store he's been dumped at. There is the meat of the action – more or less – as Mike uses his sarcastic tone to great effect in negotiating with the dim novice robber Rodrigo (Yanez) who can't command two thoughts at the same time. Among the hostages include a local gal named Mary (Paulson, an uncanny Kelly Preston look-alike), a leather capped biker (Wiles) so engrossed in his magazine reading he barely notices the crime except to pontificate on every germaine item that pops into conversation a la Cliff Clavin of 'Cheers', and the world-weary store owner Jack (Cullum, late of the cult tv series 'Northern Exposure'), who has an answer for everything as well.

To gum up the works is the local sheriff, Pembry (Corbin, also from 'Exposure'), who has an ax to grind with Mike for ruining his little league baseball game which is still in progress as he tries to command his inept squad of Barney Fifes including his by the book deputy Beaumont (Busey, son of Gary) who provides the official rules of negotiation by the FBI from its cellophaned shrink wrapping.

Foxx does the best with the dog-eared hoary plot such as it is and does his own riff on this ill-advised comedy attempt of 'Dog Day Afternoon' with not much at risk and a pedestrian pace by the director Steve Rash. The one running gag of a kid in the store thinking Mike is Puff Daddy is the atypical type of humor strung out for a laugh.

The only thing that's held up is the audience's patience and the tight leash the film has on its star's true talent.

This movie was okay. It made me laugh out loud more than once. It was however VERY slow moving in parts. I fell asleep watching it on Friday night, but it was decent enough that on Saturday morning I found where I dozed off and continued watching it.

A good point is that the movie manages to be moderately funny without being crude or overly sexual... That's hard to find these days. The biggest negative is that virtually the entire plot occurs in one spot, and you get very little change of scenery throughout the entire movie.

If you're looking for continuous laughs, this may not be the movie for you. But if you can endure the slow parts, the humor will sporadically appear.

There are a couple of these movies you catch on cable that manage to sneak some real wit and sympathy into a no-man's-land of stylistic boredom that doesn't even earn the name B-movie ( where this kind of movie is concerned, it's always 1986. )

There are rules to watching a movie like this. You never call them by their real name, because you can't remember their real name, but are to be referred to instead by embarrassed asides to your girlfriend that go entirely ignored while she flips through a Zagat guide, such as "I saw this piece of s--t with Burt Reynolds and Sinbad that was actually kind of funny." Also, you never watch them from beginning to end, but catch them in the middle. Failure to obey this law could result in a meteoric drop in self-esteem and feeling of productivity. That feeling like "the day's being wasted."

The art of a car-wash movie consists of brushing against cliché then pulling back at the last moment. The trick isn't to get you to laugh, but to keep you smiling internally. It's all in the delivery. When Jamie Foxx first encounters a vaguely hostile Little League team and says "Children of the corn," it could very easily come off like a hokey black pop-culture reference to get the Magic Johnson Cineplex crowd roaring. But in this movie, he says it quietly, as if to himself, with a girlishly shocked tinge to his voice. The result is that you find yourself chuckling about the line a half-hour later or after the movie has ended, instead of while it's happening. Most of the jokes here work like that.

And Jamie Foxx is so charming in this film. He looks "street" enough but acts the ninnyhammer as well as Woody Allen, and there's a refreshing lack of explanation about why he's such a nerd. Who else can play the badass, the geek, the samaritan, the tormented artist, the preening genius, and every shade in between, and never coast on the support and shared background of a presumed black audience? There is no pandering in Foxx's performances, no trace of the veiled minstrel show that otherwise plagues most black performers who fall back on those tricks for easy laughs.

A prescription: If you don't believe me that there's a finesse to making even a good bland film, then watch Legally Blonde 2 back-to-back with this one and learn the error of your ways.

"Held Up" is one of the those movies that doesn't require a whole lot. It is an enjoyable comedy that played like a comedy of errors.

Jamie Foxx is one comedian that is really funny. I don't think "Held Up" could have been made without him. I enjoyed how Foxx mixed the comedy with scenes of drama. It gave a nice balance to a light-hearted and good natured film. Everyone plays a comedic part in this film from Barry Corbin to Nia Long and Jake Busey. "Held Up" is just good fun.

I have to say that this is not the best film made, but I disagree with those who call "Held Up" the worst movie made. I give this film a 7 out of 10.

To the point:

I rented this DVD last night and was totally prepared for the simplest level of entertainment.... and was still disappointed. We turned it off. I chuckled a couple times, but the movie was going nowhere and Jamie was being wasted on some really, really, really bad dialogue. They all were. Dumb and Dumber looks like fine art compared to this.