D.C. MOVIE GUYS

The Pacifier
Directed by Adam Shankman
Sedating audiences nationwide beginning 3/4/5
1.5 *
Although it may seem a bit early in his career to be making his Kindergarten Cop, Vin Diesel’s latest star vehicle is a rather oddly blended movie that is too violent for the kids it is aimed at and far too mild for the Vin’s usual action crowd. And even if the mélange was not bad enough, the movie that is on screen is pretty dreadful stuff (maybe not The Chronicles of Riddick bad, but dull and obvious).
The movie opens with Navy SEAL Shane (“Go away, Shane. Go away.”) Wolfe (VD) mounting a rescue mission to snatch a scientist (Tate Donovan) kidnapped by Serbian terrorists intent on finding a computer program he has written. But though the mission seems a success, the scientist is killed and Wolfe is wounded. Following two months recuperation and the program still missing, Wolfe’s navy boss wants him to baby-sit the scientist’s five kids while the boss escorts the widow (Faith Ford) to Switzerland where the program is presumably hidden in a bank’s safe deposit box. Now, with this set-up let us see if you are as smart as screenwriters Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (Taxi—the lousy Jimmy Fallon movie not the clever TV series) and thus smart enough for a spiritually withering, but hugely profitable career as a Hollywood script hack:

1. When the career military man is suddenly left in charge of five children, he will:
a. Instill strict military discipline and seek to impose the same lifestyle he is used to upon the unruly brats.
b. Dismiss the household staff and bring in his military buddies for a week-long party.
c. Ignore the kids and spend all his time looking for the military secrets that will further his career.
d. Hack them to death with a kitchen knife.
2. Knowing that the funniest thing in the world is the smell of baby excrement and all attendant gags, you will have your hero:
a. Change a diaper with the same level of disgust one would exhibit at opening up an oven at Auschwitz.
b. Have our hero immersed in a sewer.
c. Have him recover a soiled diaper from a ball pit.
d. Do not be ridiculous, no SEAL would act like a 9-year-old girl confronted with a baby’s diaper, he would change it.
e. A, B, and C.
3. You already have a bunch of kids, and they need a pet, You give them:
a. A huge slobbering dog.
b. A disinterested lasagna-eating CGI cat.
c. A duck that will bite villains in their private parts.
d. Goldfish that can be comically flushed when the toddler reveals, “My fish swim upside down.”
4. The kids take an instant dislike to him, but he will win them over through:
a. Threats and intimidation
b. Allow the bad guys to waste them and continue searching for the secret program; pass off loss of kids as regrettable collateral damage.
c. Win them over by learning what secretly troubles them and interrupt important search for missing program while teaching driving, directing community theatre version of The Sound of Music, teaching them how to beat up bullies, stomping the sadistic vice principal in front of entire school, and learning a silly song which once hot action star will perform for unbelieving audience.
d. None of the above, all of the above, who cares.
5. You need a hackneyed way to end the movie, do you?
a. Bring in a very famous actor for a cameo appearance playing a character mentioned but never seen
b. Reveal that one of the minor characters has actually been working for the enemy and will betray you just at the moment of triumph
c. Nail the pretty widow, burn the house to the ground, and blame it on the commies.
d. Two words: car chase.
e. Apologize to the audience and stop the projector.

Answer these question and email them to Disney Corp. and you have a shot at becoming a screenwriter at the studio lovingly known as Mouschwitz (pity they are not that clever with their writing). Although you would not know it from his recent work, Vin Diesel is better than this (heck, Jean-Claude Van Damme is better than this), but no one will ever know if he keeps hitching a dwindling star to stuff like this.
Since Vin’s career seems to be moving at a more rapid pace, one guesses it will not be long before the cameos in dumb-ass Jackie Chan movies are followed by a desperation career change. If I do not see you, hasta la vista, baby.
–Bill Henry

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