Dir.
Adam Shankman, 2005, Canada/USA, 95 mins
Cast:
Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham
It is par for the course that when you are a successful action hero, your sights turn to more 'interesting projects'. After all - you don't want to be just associated with violent roles, you want to stretch yourself and try your hand at other characters.
What is curious then is why someone like Vin Diesel decides on a project like The Pacifier. In fairness to Diesel this shouldn't be as absurd as it sounds. He has proved himself to be versatile in roles that demand more than a flex of the muscles and a pithy on-liner - in Saving Private Ryan he showed great promise, and his performance as a trader in Boiler Room was uniformly well received. His involvement in this film however, is just too much to bear - The Pacifier is as god-awful a film as you are likely to see this year, and one that makes you hanker for the relative qualities of Kindergarten Cop.
Like Arnie's fish-out-of-water comedy The Pacifier 's plot centres on a tough guy forced into domesticity and the inevitable side-splitting comedy which results from this. Diesel plays top Navy Seal Shane Wolfe, who in the pre-title sequence (which seems to have taken most of the budget for itself) rescues an important scientist from a group of Serbian terrorists. When the scientist is subsequently killed Wolfe is called upon to baby-sit the scientist's family so their mother (Ford) can head to Switzerland to retrieve an important item from a safety deposit box. Hilarity, then ensues (or doesn't as the case may be) as Diesel struggles to come to terms with life with a group of youngsters intent on making it as difficult as they can, at the same time protecting them from the most disorganised terrorists on the planet. His protection extends, of course, to helping the kids understand the true value in standing up for yourself and twatting someone - be they bullying sports coaches or snidey boy scouts. Ultimately an understanding develops between them and the lives of all involved are enriched, and the terrorists in our midst are dealt with accordingly.
That The Pacifier comes to us from Disney and the director of Bringing Down The House should be no real surprise. The film hurtles along in much the same way as you have come to expect from many American family comedies - there are obvious pratfalls, ridiculous foreign accents, numerous baby shit and sick gags and a thin vein of some deeper meaning to nauseate over. And a duck, of course.
The set pieces, whilst nothing new, do their business, and there is occasionally hints of genuine humour - in particular the brief scenes involving Brad Garrett (Robert from Everybody Loves Raymond) as a ridiculously sadistic wrestling coach ultimately meeting his match. But other than these minor points there is a lack of humour with a formula that is beginning to look a little worn out. That they contextualise this by references to 'Shock and Awe' parenting and the evil of North Korea (you really can't trust any kind of foreigner in fact), demonstrates a strong vein of jingoism. Recognisable sitcom faces and the biggest action movie star of the moment can't disguise the film's inadequacies. No doubt it will do supremely well.
Adam Watkins
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