Paul Blart: Mall Cop Blu Ray Review

Paul Blart: Mall Cop brings Kevin James to the silver screen in a leading role for the first time. Sure he shared the credits with Adam Sandler in I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, but this is his first time out there on his own. Not satisfied with the leading male role, he’s also gone for producer and writer as well!

For those that aren’t that aware of Kevin James, he started out his career as a stand up comedian and moved to TV sit coms from a few appearances in Everybody Loves Raymond to his own vehicle King of Queens. It was only a matter of time before he took a swing at Hollywood. His first role was quite a successful turn in Hitch as the hapless Albert Brennaman and the role of a chunky guy, hopeless with affairs of the heart is essentially the role that he’s repeating here.

Paul Blart is a chunky middle aged single father. He’s a security guard at a local mall, but has ambitions of becoming a state trooper. For the last eight years he’s taken the entrance exam and for the last eight years he’s failed the physical. Will this year be lucky number 9? Weeelllll……..No. Paul suffers from hypoglycemia and literally stumbles a few inches short of the finishing line after a stellar performance. It seems that Paul is destined to shepherd people around shops in a dead end job.

Dead end it may be, but Paul approaches his job with diligence and a seriousness that his fellow colleagues don’t share, they’re essentially clock punchers, while Paul genuinely feels he has a duty to maintain order within the mall.

On a day like any other in the mall Paul comes across Amy (Jayma Mays) for the first time. She’s just opened a hair extension stand in the mall and it’s love at first site (for Paul that is). Reasonably successful initial flirting is followed by a disastrous bar incident that leaves Paul thinking he stands no chance with Amy at all. What he doesn’t reckon on, is the mall being taken over by an armed bunch of X-gamer bandits and Amy being taken hostage. Paul is the only other person left free in the mall. He’s the only man who can foil the crime and rescue the girl. Is he man enough for the task? Will his sugar levels hold out? Watch and find out.

Financially Paul Blart was a cinematic success with a worldwide gross of nearly $183 million from a $26 million budget. Critically it was pretty universally panned and I really can’t see why. No, there’s not too much depth here and as a comedy it won’t have you rolling in the aisles, but I thought it was pretty entertaining and definitely had enough funny moments to make it a decent comedy. Kevin James made the character of Paul Blart slightly too much of a sad case for me (I think he could’ve still generated the sympathy for the character without making him quite as pathetic as he is), but this is a small issue and easily forgotten. The rest of the cast are pretty good Jayma Mays seems to have ‘extremely cute girl’ roles pretty much nailed. If there’s a role that requires a girl to be extremely cute it’s pretty much a straight fight between her and Amy Adams. There are a few other faces in there that you’ll recognize (a happy Madison regular in Erick Avari amongst others) and the X-gamer bandits (BMX riders, skateboarders and free runners) are all real sportsmen and women, not actors at all, which I only found out during the extras, so they can’t have done that bad a job (they did have very limited lines though, most of the time they were doing what they do best chasing Paul around the mall).

The picture quality of this Blu Ray version was pretty damn good. Presented in 1.85:1 MPRG-4 1080p that is clear with good whites, blacks and colours, very little grain and no real digital artifacts to mention it’s pretty much as good as you could hope for for a comedy. We’re also treated to a full Dolby True HD soundtrack which holds its own as well. In a pretty empty mall there isn’t really that much call for a booming soundtrack so I can’t really say that it’ll rock your house or push an HD surround setup to its fullest but it does its job well and the audio is always crisp and clear (always vital in comedies lest you miss the jokes).

The extras on this disc are pretty much the usual fare. There’re the now obligatory deleted scenes (and you can generally see why they hit the cutting room floor), the commentary with Kevin James and Todd Garner and a whole load of featurettes that cover the stuntwork done by the X-gamers.

If you’re in the mood for some light hearted, easy to follow, won’t tax your brain too much, feel good comedy then look no further. Worth a watch in my opinion.

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