Police... secours!

My mission as of late has been to watch every single film on the list of 100 worst movies ever made. Right now I have scratched off around 20, with this steaming pile of rotting filth being one of them. Make no mistake, Car 54 is one of the single worst movies to come out of Hollywood, or as I like to call it, Evil Town (creative name, no?). I violently protest any of the other posters who claimed that some parts of this movie were either "average" or (shudder) "funnny." Nothing in this movie works, from start to finish, and to save the sanity of others I will try and express who bad things get. The opening scene features a truly horrible song and dance number which is badly filmed with a soft glow technique and features a cartoon canary that at one point dresses up like a rapper (oh yeah, no racial stereotypes here, no sir). Then we discover that this was the dream of our main character, a goofy cop played by the single most irritating man on the planet. Seriously, his voice and silly putty face made me want to shoot someone when he started talking. We then get the opening credits as a crappy rap song is played, one where a single verse is repeated 3 TIMES. God, was that excruciating, considering that during this song I got supposedly "wacky" footage of the cops acting silly. The rest of the movie is populated with characters NO ONE could love, a barely existing plot that has no chance of being stretched over 90 minutes, and who knows what else. Honestly I couldn't stomach much of this trash, since most of the humor is either obvious or downright nasty. Obvious example: the policemen keep going to donut stores when they're supposed to be working. OH, HAR HAR HAR. Is that supposed to be funny in 1994, much less 2003? Plus the fact that the entire thing is horribly outdated by its fashion, soundtrack, and slang. This was back when rappers wearing giant clock necklaces was considered "hip," so you can imagine the amount of bad fashion choices spattered throughout this film. Rosie O' Donnel makes her film debut here, and she crashes and burns I'm happy to say. Nasty example: the main character actually has sex with Rosie O' Donnel while screaming, "Oooh! OOOOH! OOOOOOOH!" You can't know it by reading that, but he says it in a "comical" way. Trust me, it's just plain nauseating. AVOID CAR 54, WHERE ARE YOU IF YOU VALUE THE PURITY OF YOUR SOUL. 0/4 stars

This movie is not as bad as you may have heard. It is even worse. I actually saw this movie about 3 years ago, and I am just now getting around to reviewing it because it took me that long to wrap my brain around how insipid this film actually is. Only the presence of Jeremy Piven saves this from being 100% garbage. I think Jeremy was drunk and/or injected with horse tranquilizers for all his scenes; I would have to be intoxicated to appear in this movie, too. Without Mr. Piven to dilute the pain, I believe my VCR would have spontaneously combusted from bad movie overload. He is, however, only a tiny oasis of talent in the vast wasteland of crap that is known as "Car 54". Avoid, like you would small pox, plutonium or any other weapon of mass destruction.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen..kept flipping back and forth to another show. I watched it because I love Fran Drescher. I thought she was funny as 'let me feel you badge Velma' and Rosie O'Donnell was okay..but David Johanson was soooooo annoying with his voice. John C McGuinley cracks me up on Scrubs but not in this movie. Horrible horrible horrible. A rated R movie that ends with a mob guy yelling 'I want my mommy' is just the worst of the worst because thats a clichéd line from most PG movies. It provides no laughs for adults. Fran Drescher mustve done this before The Nanny got on the air because TN debuted the year before and anyone with their own sitcom wouldn't offer to do this piece of garbage. Anyone who glances at the script can tell its a bad movie..no one could've thought it would be a hit.

Everyone grows up with some cherished memories. One of mine was the T.V. series "Car 54, Where Are You?". It had a simple charm and the main characters Toody (Joe E. Ross) and Muldoon (Fred Gwynne) were gentle and the humour was good clean fun. Although they would mess things up at the beginning of each episode they would somehow get everything alright in the end without anyone getting into harm. Fred Gwynne's character (Muldoon) evoked sympathy and love from his viewers - especially children. With this in mind I got out the video of the movie remake of this series. What an absolute disgrace of a movie it turned out to be! The makers of this movie completely turned around the series two morally decent characters and made them into immoral fools. The key point of the T.V. series was that Muldoon was an innocent, naive policeman who did his job with a genuine love for those he served. The Muldoon in this movie remake is a repulsive character. The clean fun is also out in this remake. No wonder that this movie is listed by IMDb in its worst 100 movies of all time. It deserves it! The makers of this movie lost its main market (the nostalgics) by ignoring the behaviour standards of the original series. Not recommended!

Officer Toody gets assigned a new partner in technology freak Officer Muldoon. They spend much of the film getting to know each other before being assigned to protect federal witness Hebert Hortz from mobster Don Motti's hitmen. When they lose the witness both Toody and Muldoon must work together to save him.

The story here isn't really important as their isn't really one to speak of. The majority of the film is a whole pile of set pieces where Toody and Muldoon don't get on etc. Then with 30 minutes left they get assigned to protect Hortz, lose him and then have to get him back - it's as if the film suddenly realised that it has to do something while being onscreen. It all relies on the comedy rather than the plot, however there's barely a funny line in it - I half-laughed once when the two hitmen were talking ("I often considered plumbing as a vocation", "nah - I take the kids down to Florida"), and that was it for me, not another laugh in the whole damn thing. Even the scenes that play out over the credits are rubbish - I assume that they thought no one would be left by then.

The main problem with the film is the performances - especially Johansen. It's impossible to enjoy any scene that he's in because of his horrible voice and irritating OTT facial expressions. In this he really does have a face that you want to just keep kicking! McGinley is not as bad but when he's on screen you can't help but feel disappointed - he's had so many good support roles in good films but yet this is his reward. Likewise with Jeremy Piven - not a big star but always does good work in support. Here his gay witness is terrible - witness his rapping with black prisoners to see the depths he has sank. He did a gay character in Rush Hour 2 which was very funny and not totally OTT as it is here. Daniel Baldwin is hampered by a terrible character and at times you can almost see him thinking that he should have put a few more years in on "Homicide: LOTS". Rosie O'Donnell is awful and is almost as annoying as Johansen. One clever bit of casting is Barbara Hamilton as Toody's first partner - clever because of the Munster's connection with the original series, but he's not a great actor (his most recent work being novelty walk-ons in porn). Nipsey Russell really should have known better and should never have agreed to spoil the film's tag line by adding the f-word to it. Gore magicians Penn and Teller just add to the tacky novelty feel of the whole thing.

This should have treated the source material with more respect and it might have been better. However it's a real shambles. No plot, roundly terrible performances and not a laugh in the place. Many of the "jokes" are embarrassing - don't miss the opening scene where Johansen "sings" with a rapping cartoon bird. In fact the rapping thing bothers me because this is full of ethnic stereotypes and constantly uses black culture for comedy effect (like Piven rapping - to general applause!).

Overall it's not the worst thing I've ever seen but it is certainly one big unfunny embarrassment from start to finish.