The Tuxedo

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 5.4 out of 10
Director: Kevin Donovan
Writer: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi, Michael J. Wilson
Star: Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jason Isaacs
Genres: Action/Comedy/Sci-Fi
Release Date: September 27, 2002 (United States)

The first scene of action movies is always a self-contained shocker that has nothing to do with the rest of the plot. James Bond parachutes from a mountainside, Clint Eastwood disarms a robber, etc. In “The Tuxedo,” Jackie Chan begins with a deer urinating in a mountain stream; the deer, the urine and the stream have nothing to do with anything else in the movie.

Water does figure in the plot. The bad guy wants to introduce an ingredient into the world’s water supply that will cause victims to dehydrate and die. To save themselves, they will need to buy his pure water. Since he starts by sabotaging let me repeat myself the world’s water supply, he will dehydrate everyone on earth who doesn’t already drink only bottled water and thus inherit a planet of health nuts, which is just as well because all fish and animals and birds (which also don’t drink much bottled water) are going to be dehydrated too so we’ll all need PowerBars.

I’ve been waiting for this movie. My wife thinks I don’t drink enough water, which she believes should be at least eight glasses a day. She often looks at me sourly and says, “You’re not drinking enough water.” In hot climates her concern mounts. Last summer in Hawaii she had the grandchildren so worked up they burst into our bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to dust.

Banning (Ritchie Coster), who is named after what you do during speeches but not before them or after intermission (so why is he called Banning?), has an unorthodox plan for distributing his formula or virus or secret ingredient or whatever it is that causes water to become dehydrating agent: He’s going to use water striders those insects that can skate across surface of pond.

Do they have queens? Dr May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and founder of the Insect Fear Film Festival held every year at Great (as in really big) University, answers that question:

She writes: “Water striders are true bugs (i.e., insects with piercing/sucking mouthparts) that run or skate on the surface of bodies of water, feeding on the insects that fall onto the water surface.” There are about 500 species of gerrids in the world and, as far as I know, not a single one of those 500 species is eusocial (i.e., has a complex social structure with reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care). I don’t even know of an example of maternal care in the whole group. In short, your answer is no! “I can’t wait to see this film,” she said. “Sounds like a future candidate for the Insect Fear Film Festival!” More crushing evidence Dr. Bruce P. Smith, expert entomologist at Ithaca College writes me: “There is no known species of water striders that has queens. The most closely related insects that do are some colonial aphid speciies, and the most familiar (and much more distant relatives) are the ants, bees, wasps and termites.” And he adds helpfully: “One mammal does have queens the naked mole rats of Africa.” Revealing himself as a student of insect films, he continues: “If my memory is correct, ‘Arachnophobia’ has a king spider but no queen totally absurd!” So there you have it. Professors Smith and Berenbaum have spoken. Banning thinks he possesses a water strider queen when he only has a lucky regular water strider living the life of Riley.

But back to “The Tuxedo.” Jackie Chan plays Jimmy Tong, a taxi driver who is hired by Debi Mazar to be Clark Devlin’s chauffeur. Devlin (Jason Isaacs) is described as a multimillionaire secret agent whose $2 million tuxedo turns him into a fighting machine (also a dancer, kung-fu expert, etc). After Devlin is injured by a skateboard bomb, Jimmy puts on the suit and soon partners with agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who realizes he has a strange accent for a man named Clark Devlin but joins him in battle against Banning.

The movie is silly beyond comprehension. Even if it weren’t silly, it would still be beyond comprehension. It does have its moments, such as when the tuxedo inadvertently cold-cocks James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and Jackie Chan has to go onstage in place of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. He’s very funny as James Brown. Although not as funny as James Brown is. There’s something engaging about Jackie Chan. Even in a bad movie I like him because what you see is so obviously what you get. This time he goes light on the stunts at least the stunts he obviously does himself so that during the closing credits there are lots of flubbed lines and times when the actors break out laughing, but none of those spellbinding shots in which he misses the bridge, falls off the scaffold, etc., etc. And some of the shots are computer-generated which is kind of cheating isn’t it with Jackie Chan? Ah well! Luckily special effects are not frowned upon at the Insect Fear Film Festival.

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