Blue Streak (1999, PG-13)

Directed by Les Mayfield

Written by Michael Berry, John Blumenthal, and Steve Carpenter

Starring Martin Lawrence, Luke Wilson, and Dave Chappelle

As Reviewed by James Brundage

Typecasting. Definition, when writers pigeonhole you into one role, assuming you can do nothing more than that. However, typecasting is not just a product of the writers. It is not just a product of your Hollywood image. It’s a product of what you choose to do.

Case in point Martin Lawrence, whose new movie Blue Streak seems like a carbon copy of his last one, Nothing to Lose. The jokes work off of the same punch line, the scenes seems stolen from one another. Everything is placed towards a completely predictable ending.

Oh, yeah, and its inexplicably enjoyable.

We've seen the buddy comedy a thousand times before. Cheech and Chong, Nothing to Lose, The Grand Jury Testimony of William Jefferson Clinton. Well, maybe not the last one, but we've seen 'em all and laughed at 'em all, being fully aware of how cheap the laughs they evict are. We don't laugh that hard, and we don't laugh that much. We don't care about the characters and the story means as much to us as an anthill in Africa. But watch we will.

Blue Streak is a movie that fits perfectly into the interracial buddy comedy. Streetwise Jewel Thief Miles Logan (Lawrence) infiltrates the LAPD to get back a $17M diamond he stole, teams up with homegrown-country-boy-newly-promoted-from-traffic-cop Detective Carlson (Luke Wilson) and the two end up fighting crime while Lawrence tries to get his diamond back.

Every possible obstacle that can be put in his way is. Every possible laugh is exploited for all that is worth. Thus we get the general aura of the movie: squeezed.

The movie feels as if it has nothing left about five minutes into it, and pulls it along on the buddy comedy shoestring for the next hour and a half. You get frustrated, you wait to laugh. You want the characters to die, trip, and fail. You are getting very sleepy. You are listening only to the sound of the DTS.

Yeah, it's the buddy comedy. We've seen it a million times before and it ain't getting any better. Blue Streak is just 1,000,001, and isn't worth the time or money.