Unfunny buddies

>> Rush Hour 3 is a crass
case of diminishing returns

by MARK SLUTSKY

I poured one out for the old guy and watched Ingmar Bergman’s still magnificent The Seventh Seal the night before the Rush Hour 3 press screening. This may have not put me in the best frame of mind to appreciate director Brett Ratner’s action-comedy threequel, but it did provide for a moment of bizarre cinematic dislocation when I realized that Max von Sydow featured prominently in both movies, which otherwise could not be more different.

Now, it would be stacking the deck to compare Bergman’s stark meditation on death and God with a movie that features Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker getting a rectal exam from Roman Polanski. And I’ve always had a soft spot for Ratner, despite his status as a critical whipping boy. Though his more recent stuff, like the last X-Men and Red Dragon, has been a serious step down, he usually has a knack for making even the most inconsequential stuff frictionless and watchable—even the potentially maudlin Family Man, or the brain-dead grab-assery of After the Sunset.

Or, the unabashedly ’80s-style buddy comedies that are the Rush Hour movies. Featuring the communication-challenged team of Chan and Tucker, the first two films in the series were loud, colourful, kind of annoying, but fun all the same. The third, however, which features our heroes jetting off to France to uncover some Triad plot or other, is where this series has just gotten crass, and it doesn’t have the charm of the previous films.

Chan’s stunt work is still pretty awesome, and there are a few exciting action scenes (though nothing on a par with this summer’s awesome Bourne Ultimatum). The chemistry between the two, though, has, if anything, degraded, and Tucker’s motor-mouth comedy stylings don’t yield much in the way of laughs. There’s also the matter of the movie’s pervasive, dumb, racist and homophobic humour, which seems less born out of hate than just laziness—going for the easy laughs.

Oh, and there’s Polanski, too, in a small role, making a very strange return to American cinema. His appearance is probably the most interesting thing in this exemplary case of diminishing returns. Rush Hour 3 isn’t worth your time—if you want to see a truly funny buddy comedy, wait until next week and check out Superbad instead.

Rush Hour 3 opens this
Friday, Aug. 10

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