Reno 911!: Miami (2007)

Directed by Robert Ben Garant. Starring Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Robert Ben Garant, Niecy Nash, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Cedric Yarbrough, Patton Oswalt, Mary Birdsong, Paul Rudd, Carlos Alazraqui, David Koechner, Nick Swardson. [R]

Those bumbling, incompetent members of the Reno Sheriff’s Department make the jump from basic cable to the big screen, and it contains about as many laughs as an average episode (too bad it’s also more than three times longer than one). Story is so scant and inconsequential that it’s not worth mentioning other than the basic premise that the cops are left patrolling the streets of Miami because of a terrorist attack, but that premise isn’t milked nearly as much as it should have been, and the movie also frequently undermines the show’s status as a parody of “COPS” (unless a Tony Montana-esque drug lord played by Rudd is stupid enough to let cameras roll when delivering vague, accent-mangled threats to police officers, and on second thought…). Fans will appreciate a few in-jokes, but even their ranks will probably agree that these antics are best expressed in short-form—the welcome starts wearing out pretty quickly. Padded out exorbitantly to reach feature length, and the filmmakers seem more concerned with trotting out cameos than giving some of its “regular” cast members opportunities to shine, Birdsong and Alazraqui especially (unless most of their initial scenes ended up on the cutting room floor?). Those aforementioned cameos include Paul Reubens, Dwayne Johnson, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and Danny DeVito (who also co-produced).

47/100