Story:Bryan Mills has only recently given up his government career as what he calls, a "preventer" to be near his daughter Kim, who lives with Bryan's ex-wife Lenore and her new husband. To make ends meet, Bryan joins some former colleagues for special security details (like guarding a pop diva), but most of his time and energy are spent re-connecting with Kim. But, when Kim requests his permission to spend time in Paris with a friend, he reluctantly consents.
Bryan's worst fears are realized when Kim and her friend Amanda are suddenly abducted - in broad daylight - from the Paris apartment at which they've just arrived. Moments before Kim is dragged away by the as yet unseen and unknown assailants, she manages to phone Bryan, who begins to expertly piece together clues that will take him to the darkness of Paris's underworld, and to the City of Light's plushest mansions. He will face nightmares worse than anything he experienced in black ops - and let nothing and no one stop him from saving his daughter.
Cast: Kirk Cameron (Caleb Holt), Erin Bethea (Catherine Holt), Ken Bevel (Michael Simmons), Stephen Dervan (Wayne Floyd), Eric Young (Terrell Sanders), Jason McLeod (Eric Harmon), Harris Malcom (John Holt), Phyllis Malcom (Cheryl Holt), Perry Revell (Dr. Gavin Keller), Stephanie Makulinski (Robin Cates), Renata Williams (Latasha Brown), Dwan Williams (Deidra Harris), Amberly Marquard (Ashley Phillips)
Since "Growing Pains" signed off the airwaves in 1992, eldest Seaver son Kirk Cameron has largely kept off Hollywood's radar. The 1980s teen heartthrob hasn't joined the ranks of former child star wrecks; there have been no reality TV gigs, drug addictions, or scandals of any kind. At the same time, Cameron hasn't enjoyed major stardom the way his seventh season protégé Leonard DiCaprio has. Cameron's post-"Pains" work includes a 1½-season sitcom vehicle, a couple of Disney Channel movies, the infrequent TV guest slot, and a pair of "Growing Pains" reunions. None of that pointed to a newsmaking big screen return, but that's exactly what Cameron received in last fall's Fireproof. Made for just $500,000 and released in under 1,000 theaters, this PG-rated drama opened in fourth place at the box office. It would go on to earn back its budget over 65 times. To date, Cameron's little film has grossed over $33 million domestically. That may not scream blockbuster, but it's more than what was garnered by widely-released 2008 films starring George Clooney (Leatherheads), Mike Myers (The Love Guru), and Owen Wilson (Drillbit Taylor).
Of course, it's a little bit of a stretch to call Fireproof a "Kirk Cameron movie" (a phrase that hasn't much been invoked since 1989's Listen to Me). Though Cameron is top-billed, the clear lead, and undoubtedly the most famous name onboard, Fireproof is first and foremost a "Christian movie." That domain was not new for the actor; he became a devout Christian at the height of his popularity and earlier this decade starred in the Left Behind trilogy of post-Rapture films. Nor was it unfamiliar to Alex and Stephen Kendrick, the brothers and pastors who founded a film company out of their well-attended Sherwood Baptist Church. Fireproof is the megachurch group's third film.
Set in Sherwood's hometown of Albany, Georgia, Fireproof tells the story of a married couple in conflict. Fire chief Caleb Holt (Cameron) and his wife of seven years, hospital PR administrator Catherine (Erin Bethea), are not getting along. In fact, they can hardly stand each other's company. Both are seriously considering a divorce. Caleb's father (Harris Malcom) discourages such an action, instead pleading with his son to spend the next forty days on something called "The Love Dare." A handwritten book provides daily instructions and Bible passages for salvaging the marriage. Taking Dad up on his offer, Caleb quietly follows the rescue plan and starts making one gesture each day to show his appreciation for his wife. You might anticipate Caleb's efforts being a painless cure-all in the world of homegrown films, but in fact a number of obstacles still stand in the way of the Holts' union being healthily restored. Suspicious of her husband's carefully-metered thoughtfulness, Catherine grows increasingly close to a suave colleague doctor (Perry Revell). Meanwhile, Caleb has his own demons to conquer, the most pressing of which seem to be his lack of faith and his appreciation for the Internet. Nothing else needs to be said about the plot of Fireproof, which the DVD cover dubs "The #1 Inspirational Movie in America!" in an unattributed quote.
That you can guess where things are going is of little detriment. You don't watch a movie like this for the twists and turns. You do watch a movie like this expecting to get something worthwhile out of the time devoted. This is where Fireproof fails. It certainly means well, providing a how-to for saving marriages with Christ's help. But that makes it more of a motivational workshop than a dramatic motion picture. Judging it as the latter finds it lacking in many ways.
The acting is unpolished, which perhaps is to be expected of a cast short on experience and largely unpaid. Even the best work, coming from the reasonably accomplished Cameron, is subpar and synthetic, handicapping characterization and draining whatever realism might have survived the mawkish script. The widespread incompetence gives the proceedings a basic cable TV movie feel, which the rambling focus, untidy pace, and unspectacular technique all seem to actually fall short of.
In the filmmakers' defense, the movie does seem to be earnest. These aren't folks churning out slush for a paycheck. Everyone involved seems to believe in the message and the means. (38-year-old Cameron will celebrate his 18th wedding anniversary in July.) That doesn't make it any better than it is, but it does mean that artistic dismissals should come with an extra touch of consideration and, for me at least, guilt.
Comedy Starring Kevin James, Jayma Mays, Keir O'Donnell and Shirley Knight. Directed by Steve Carr. PG. 87 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.
Possibly the unanimated screen cousin followup to Kung Fu Panda, Paul Blart: Mall Cop answers the pressing question - Can a chubby guy be a superhero too - in the resounding affirmative. TV's King of Queens lovable working stiff Kevin James relocates to suburban Jersey in an even larger than life silly but good natured laughathon on the big screen as the corpulent crimefighter mall cop in question, who's more than a little obsessive about cornering anyone shopping around for trouble. Directed by Steve Carr (Daddy Day Care, Next Friday) and co-written by Kevin James, Paul Blart: Mall Cop stars James as the hapless 21st century Jackie Gleason, scorned and ridiculed both on and off the job, but not hearing any of it. Between nurturing elaborate fantasies of supersized superheroics, Blart spends a typical day running over a neighborhood dog tailgating his scooter on the way to work, directing civilians to exactly which stores the heated toilet seats are located in, and being subjected to a Victoria's Secret beatdown by an irate shopper dissing the slutty underwear.
Blart is also a single dad duped into a green card marriage by an even more rotund illegal alien femme fatale, who left him to raise preteen daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez) alone. But he's showered with plenty of maternal doting, emotional support and platefuls of food at home by both Mom (Shirley Knight) and surrogate parentally inclined Maya.
And though the family is eager to match him up with a mate online, Blart wears his heart conspicuously on his sleeve at work, nursing a crush on perky wig saleslady Amy (Jayma Mays). But running interference on his courtship moves, is a gang of cutthroat shoplifters who show up one day, intent on conspiring a hostile takeover of the premises on skateboards, and committing assorted acts of mall malice.
Not to worry, Blart singlehandedly sets his sights on finally getting a chance to seriously show his stuff chasing down these athletic accomplices. Which includes making the most of his mountainous assets like gargantuan sliding and slithering around the mall, and flattening the felons with the advantage of his ample torso, when not beating up a perp with a handy tanning machine. He also gets a little help from a jar of some sort of wickedly spicy condiment called The Devil's Crotch, enough said.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop is an affectionate if often sitcomish ode to creative copping and mindless mall madness. In any case, James sweats it out lifting the material above the mundane and derivative, and nicely proves that in an emergency, size matters and extra large superheroes can rule.
As the hero of the feverish hip-hop biopic Notorious, newcomer Jamal Woolard nails the first thing that any actor playing Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G., must know: how to throw his weight around. Cast as the imperious-on-the-outside, haunted-on-the-inside rapper, who grows up in the '80s in the hustler's paradise of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, Woolard swaggers down the street like a mountainous gangsta John Wayne, and he doesn't just stand tall. He looms, imposing himself on each encounter. In the movies, and pop music too, overweight people are usually outsize clowns, but the real Biggie used his bulk (300 pounds), height (he was 6 foot 3), and merciless dead-end stare to cultivate a larger-than-life presence of theatrical power: the image of a clown–turned–doughboy badass. That image eventually turned against him, and he became a martyr, killed in a drive-by shooting in 1997, at 24. Notorious is a luridly unapologetic trip through the violence, hunger, verbal bravado, and money fever of the hip-hop world, which it views as both liberating and destructive (often for the same reasons). Dressed in a pin-striped suit and bowler hat, Woolard does an uncanny impersonation of the Biggie who strutted on stage like some mack daddy from the '70s. Look closer, though, and that fleshy face might belong to a giant pouting baby. Woolard's Biggie comes on like a thug, with a voice commandingly low and grumbly, but there's a twinkle in his eye, a look that says I'm a playa who's playing you. He's a real crook who becomes a put-on crook who is then reborn, through a rap style so incendiary it's like spontaneous combustion, into a superhero. Hip-hop feeds on mythology, but Notorious sticks close to the details, and the hell-bent spirit, of Biggie's life. Ignoring the admonitions of his Jamaican-born mother (Angela Bassett), he starts to sell crack in his teens, when he's still boyish, friendly Christopher Wallace, going up to a roof to change out of his school duds and into his dealer's paraphernalia (white sneakers, gold medallion, handgun). The director, George Tillman Jr. (Soul Food), catches us up in the excitement that seduces a kid into the hustler's life, yet the film doesn't glamorize it. Chris learns his lesson the hard way — he goes to prison — and when he hooks up with the budding impresario Sean "Puffy" Combs (Derek Luke), Notorious turns into a funky capitalist message movie. Biggie craves stardom as freedom, as his one ticket out of the inner city. When he does the hedonist anthem "Party and Bulls---" at a concert, he flips the meaning of the lyrics (based on a song by the Last Poets) so that a critique of nihilism becomes a salute to it, and it's such an intoxicating number, who'd resist? Biggie makes up a lot of his dark, smoky raps on the spot. He uses his words, too, to seduce, winning over a slew of women, like the blond soul diva Faith Evans (Antonique Smith), whom he marries, and Kimberly Jones (Naturi Naughton), whom he makes over into the ferocious skin-flashing novelty act Lil' Kim. At first, they see a big fat man acting like a sex symbol. But the movie teases out the glee in Biggie — he's like a kid with a supersize sly grin, cracking up at his own self-confidence. That's how he gets to be a sex symbol. Biggie treats his women like a harem, and he thinks that makes him a man. Does it, or is he just caught up in the pathology of what he thinks a man is? That's the question that propels Woolard's remarkable performance. Notorious has a fascinating trajectory, but certain episodes leave you wanting. The film would have been stronger if Biggie's pop-star squeezes were as fully realized as the women in Ray, and Anthony Mackie, as Tupac Shakur, lacks Tupac's electrifying snakish charm. Biggie and Tupac become pals (in underwritten scenes), then mortal enemies, and the film's re-creation of the East Coast–West Coast rap war, while entertaining, is too simplistic. As presented, the entire feud spiraled out of Tupac's paranoia, his misguided belief that Biggie put a hit out on him. But why did Tupac think that in the first place? And what did these two say to each other when no one was looking? Notorious makes the death of Biggie Smalls look like a tragic mistake, instead of the outgrowth of a culture devoted to selling the fantasy of who's the biggest man. B+
r new husband. To make ends meet, Bryan joins some former colleagues for special security details (like guarding a pop diva), but most of his time and energy are spent re-connecting with Kim. But, when Kim requests his permission to spend time in Paris with a friend, he reluctantly consents. 
