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Zodiac (movie review)
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by jon bosworth
jaxvillain@yahoo.com
The reality show COPS was obviously a cultural phenomenon. Hot on the heels of the show Rescue 911 and Unsolved Mysteries, reality television was in its infancy in the late 80s as networks scrambled to try to create the sort of water-cooler talk that America’s Most Wanted had generated for the then young Fox network. Then Fox brought us COPS. It attempted to garner respect for law enforcement while allowing us to scoff at the perps the police were dealing with.
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Instead of a respect for law enforcement being the focus of people’s conversations, the people getting chased and arrested became the laughing point. (Remember the Los Angeles Police Department caught on tape beating down Rodney King? “Why can’t we all just get along?”) So twenty years later we are finally exhausted with these reality programs and television has transcended itself by turning the genre into an avenue for comedy. One of the best satires of this genre is Reno 911!.
What started out as a ridiculous and hysterical mockery of an effective police force in “America’s Biggest Small Town” has finally expanded beyond the small screen and incorporated another element of satire: the Police Academy movies. In Reno 911!: Miami the cast of the Comedy Central series goes to Miami for a police convention, but they party too hard the day before the convention and arrive late. When they do arrive Federal agents have quarantined all of the police inside of the convention hall because they were exposed to some sort of biological weapon by local drug lords. So when Lieutenant Dangle and his inept police force arrive hungover and late, they find themselves being the only police officers in the city of Miami.
From the moment the screen lights up until the very end, this film delivers laughs upon laughs. Often when a small screen television program makes it to the theater the characters that you love in small portions get too fleshed out and the humor falls to the wayside. Another trap of the conversion from small screen to big screen is the tendency to get so bogged down in plot, that the punchlines are abandoned about halfway through the movie. Reno 911! Miami does not fall into either of these traps.
The calls the police make in Miami are just as hilarious as the calls they make in Reno, and there are even some of the same characters. If you haven’t seen the show, the truly brilliant moments are composed of the most outrageous characters caught in the middle of the most preposterous situations. From the drunk guy that wrestles a dead gator to the many cameos, including The Rock as the ultimate cop, the punchlines happen in rapid fire and each moment maintains the hilarity of the television series and stacks even more jokes on top of that with a bigger budget, a license to kill off characters, and the funniest sex scene in any film.
Written by Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (who also play Lieutenant Dangle and Deputy Travis Junior respectively) this romp manages to satire the voyeurism of reality television, the Police Academy comedies of the 80s, stereotypical police, and even Scarface-type Miami crime syndicates.
Throughout the film Lieutenant Dangle is trying to prove his mettle against the ridicule of the cowboy-hat cops of the Aspen police department, while trying to enjoy Miami and South Beach in a way every archetypal homosexual would want to. Slut-cop, Deputy Clementine Johnson, is on a mission to find the man that she fell in love with and had tattooed on her breast during her first drunken night in town. Deputy Trudy Wiegel is on her perpetual quest for Lieutenant Dangle’s affections, even though he is gay, and Deputy Raineesha Williams is determined to teach Trudy how to speak street as they patrol the beaches in their unflattering police bathing suits. The crew even gets to do a little Baywatch when they respond to a beached whale and decide the best way to get rid of it is to blow it up, covering beautiful Miami Beach with whale guts.
Don’t worry about the plot, inspired though it is, this film is a great excuse to laugh the night away. Watch it with your favorite group of friends. If everyone in the group has a good sense of humor, you will be laughing constantly. I was laughing so much I had to catch my breath between scenes and the it made the film seem as though it flew by just as fast as watching an episode on television.
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