Ditto the ten funny-but-expendable deleted scenes running 12-and-a-half minutes. Next up are eleven quick featurettes exploring the production in a semi-serious style, totaling 50 minutes and presented in high-bitrate MPEG-2. The commentary from Kevin James and producer Todd Garner is as lighthearted as we might expect. No issues, but not really maximum exploitation of your home theater either.
There are a couple of well-rendered gunshots, and eventually a full, convincing bit when Paul and a perp come crashing through an enormous skylight. Pop songs are sometimes mixed into the high-resolution 5.1 Dolby TrueHD soundstage with a pleasing fidelity. Even a fight scene is adorned with just the usual thuds and cracks. Sonically, this is pretty standard fare, with most scenes driven predominantly by dialogue, perhaps embellished by the whirring of Paul's Segway. Fog in the Rainforest Cafe sequence is a little iffy, but other than that, no complaints. Blacks are relatively murky, with shoppers' clothing, the guards' clip-on ties and their shoulder microphones often appearing as vague dark shapes with no real detail. There is that faintly unnatural video edge however, and mild digital streaking on movement through the 1.85:1 frame. Shot on HD video, Paul Blart's look is exceptionally clean, with no grain and virtually no compression artifacts, even in challenging backgrounds. Need a second and admittedly different take on the film? See Mark Grady's review of the theatrical release of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Long live Kevin James (I hope), whose limber acrobatics and pratfalls belie his stocky physique. Relatively late into the movie, the good-hearted loser finds himself at the center of a thinly-veiled Die-Hard-in-a-shopping-mall scenario, when a bunch of extreme sports dudes take over on Black Friday, but long before then, high-grade hilarity ensues. As Paul Blart: Mall Cop, star Kevin James' penchant for both broad physical comedy and subtle, often wordless expression is given a perfect vessel. A few laughs, as with so many of these films, but not enough to justify the price of admission.This was physically one of the most difficult reviews I've ever had to write, simply because I was laughing so loudly and so frequently, I could barely see the keyboard. But he becomes a hero when fanatical armed robbers take over the mall, triggering a Die Hard hostage situation, in which Paul Blart discovers the hero inside himself - and his Segway transporter somehow allows him to outrun the fastest bad guy. So Paul has to be a shopping mall security guard, tragically devoted to his job, driving one of those stand-up "Segway" transporters. But, oh no, it is a pointedly real insistence on this character's underlying machismo - and a very Adam Sandler touch.) I assumed that this was going to be revealed to be a dream sequence. The opening sequence shows Blart being really fit running round the police-training assault course, but a blood-sugar crash makes him suddenly fall sound asleep just as he is about to cross the finish line. (Not because he's too fat, you understand. He plays Paul Blart, an overweight loser who longs to be a police officer but his hypoglycemia makes him fail the physical. Now here is Kevin James's first leading role - with Sanders producing. He has been such an unmemorable supporting player in so many comedies, often Adam Sandler movies.