Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
Going to see a film spin-off of a TV series you’ve never seen is like joining a sports team mid-way through the season, so was I glad to discover that ”Reno 911: Miami” was no less a remake of ”Police Academy 5: Assignment Miami Beach”!
That’s a joke, but I’m not far off the mark. You see, the feature film spawn of the Comedy Central’s COP spoof is about as original as casting Dennis Hopper in a direct-to-video action movie – and near just as entertaining; but not quite.
The film fixes on a rag-tag team of Reno cops who are called in to save the day after a terrorist attack disrupts a national police convention in Miami Beach during spring break. Naturally, they screw things up.
The main problem with ”Reno 911!: Miami” isn’t so much that it (and the series it’s based on) is merely a series of unused scenes from bad ”Police Academy” sequels (or an amalgamation of unfilmed sequences from Broken Lizard’s ”Super Troopers” – of which this shares many similarities; sans the ‘its funny’ part), but the more so the fact that there’s just nothing in it. It’s as hollow as a toilet roll. The jokes are flat; the performances aren’t that amusing and it’s all seemingly been put together so fast-and-on-the-fly that nobodies bothered to wait till they ‘came up with a good one’.
The bad news is, the film didn’t make a hell of a lot but it did quadruple it’s $10 million dollar budget, so chances are you’ll be seeing this unfunny bunch of officers back on the beat real soon.
Extras
An audio commentary, extended scenes, blooper reel and public service announcements. Also, there’s a “Lost Version” of the film – essentially all the deleted scenes slapped together. A waste of disc space.
