Movie and Television Reviews

Of the two and a half funny moments in Rush Hour 3, I prefer the one in which detectives Lee and Carter (Chan and Tucker) interrogate a Chinese-French flunky (one might imply from the henchmen’s exotic background that they’d be interesting characters, but they have about as much depth as those in the employ of Mr. Freeze). Because the only translator available is a nun, they mask some of the impolite words commonly heard in the course of a third degree application by referring to them only by their first letter, “tell him his mother’s an “H” word.” If this scene’s on youtube, you can safely skip the rest of this awful, tedious film.

The plot? I don’t want to give anything away, but I suggest you keep your eye on the creepy politician who claims to desire the end of a Chinese criminal gang. You’re on your own as to whether the innocent girl in Lee and Carter’s protection will show up out of nowhere near a French landmark in need of some rescuing.

Besides those two shockers, you should be able to guess every plot twist in RH3’s thoroughly conventional story (I batted 1000). In fact, Rush Hour Three’s greatest mystery is whether its script was written by humans or created by running the recorded babblings of senile monkeys through voice recognition software.

It’s just as well since RH3 isn’t so much a movie as a series of sketches exploiting the chemistry between Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker. But even the team of Chan and Tucker need something with which to work and in RH3, they have nothing.

Almost everything fails, from the riff on Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First” routine to the pathetically boring montage of Tucker and Lee’s falling out to the subplot (main plot? Who cares?) in which Lee must confront his estranged brother. The romance between Carter and the odd-looking Genevieve (Noemie Lenoir) is about as interesting as an episode of elimiDATE.

Jackie Chan’s acting is noticeably terrible and in the most negative correlation of movement to laughs in cinema history, Chris Tucker dances, screams, mugs, whines, and otherwise acts like a fourth grader who forgot to take his Ritalin to no effect (whenever the director feels in trouble, he tells Tucker to start dancing). And then there’s just the plain dumbness of the whole thing.

The illogic of Rush Hour wouldn’t bother me if the movie was meant to be absurd or satirical like South Park or Dumb and Dumber but in an action-comedy, it comes off as, frankly, stupid. Carter’s fight against a Chinese giant is more contrived than the bar scene in Keep on the Borderlands. Why didn’t Carter just wait a couple of minutes for Lee? Do schools beat up policemen for going in the wrong door and then keep it up after he apologizes?

The rest of the movie is mind boggling. Why do Tucker and the showgirls he ogles speak English with a French accent-in France? In any of the situationally unnecessary fights, henchmen enter one at a time and only then to be used as a projectile weapon by Chan.

When the Lee and Carter dance away near the end (Please, no RH4), one feels like getting up and kicking them for having wasted three hours of one’s life.

Or, maybe it’s just me. From the forced laughter in the theater (why do people laugh hardest at the jokes they’ve seen a hundred times in previews), it was obvious that Rush Hour is one franchise that people desire a great deal to love. I don’t know. Maybe Chan and Tucker have built up a lot of good will with their inoffensive humor; maybe Chan and Tucker aren't big enough to build a counter following like Jim Carrey; maybe people have fond memories of the first two Rush Hours; or maybe they're desperate for a good comedy. Whatever, the reason, they’re wrong to laugh at this trash and next time I’m getting up and telling them so.

Politics/Message:

Be loyal to your friends, I guess.

In one particularly painful scene, a cab driver says, “I want to be an American so that I can kill for no reason.” I’ll pass on this French-bashing opportunity to just say that the tenor of the joke is odd. The statement isn’t mocked or repudiated and the Frenchman isn't made out to seem naïve; it lacked any sense of irony. It felt like the writers were putting their opinion in the cab driver’s mouth.

Noémie Lenoir