Opened Friday, April 22
NEW YORK -- A desperately strained comedy about a millionaire embroiled in a series of kidnappings, "King's Ransom" manages to demonstrate just how elusive funniness can be. The film, starring Anthony Anderson as the boorish victim and a sweaty Jay Mohr as one of his captors, opened Friday without being screened for the press, a tactic that has become a screaming advertisement for badness. The only thing that might have helped would have been spraying the theaters with laughing gas.
Anderson, a talented second banana moving up to comedic leading-man status, plays Malcolm King, the sort of arrogant business tycoon who, in a demonstration of how far racial equality has come, has in the past generally been played by elderly Caucasians. Desperate to save his fortune from the clutches of the rapacious wife (Kellita Smith) who he is in the process of divorcing, he decides to stage his own kidnapping. He hires the brother (Charlie Murphy) of his ditzy mistress (Regina Hall) to do the deed, but the ex-con, who clearly has had his brains rattled by prison, mistakenly snatches a parking lot employee (Donald Faison) who has been using King's name to snare women.
Meanwhile, two other kidnapping plots have been put into effect, one planned by a disgruntled ex-employee (Nicole Parker) and the other by a loser fast-food worker (Mohr) who lives with his deaf grandmother (insert your own cheap gags here). The latter is the one who actually winds up with the prize, but complications, as they say, ensue.
Devoid of anything resembling wit or even guiltily amusing tasteless gags, the film lurches from one haplessly staged sequence to another, with the performers vainly struggling to infuse humor into the proceedings. While some of the actors actually manage to be amusing (Murphy brings a real wild-eyed intensity to his role as the sexually confused ex-con), mostly they founder amid the mediocrity. This is particularly true of Mohr, who brings an ill-advised but haplessly unfunny intensity to his role as the desperately grungy kidnapper.
KING'S RANSOM
New Line Cinema
Credits:
Director: Jeff Byrd
Screenwriter: Wayne Conley
Producer: Daryl Taja
Director of Photography: Robert McLachlan
Editor: Jeff Cooper
Music: Marcus Miller
Production Designer: Kalina Ivanov.
Cast:
Malcolm King: Anthony Anderson
Corey: Jay Mohr
Renee: Kellita Smith
Angela: Nicole Parker
Peaches: Regina Hall
Miss Gladys: Loretta Devine
Andre: Donald Faison
Kim: Leila Arcieri
Brooke Mayo: Brooke D'Orsay
Herb Clarke: Charlie Murphy.
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time: 97 minutes.
NEW YORK -- A desperately strained comedy about a millionaire embroiled in a series of kidnappings, "King's Ransom" manages to demonstrate just how elusive funniness can be. The film, starring Anthony Anderson as the boorish victim and a sweaty Jay Mohr as one of his captors, opened Friday without being screened for the press, a tactic that has become a screaming advertisement for badness. The only thing that might have helped would have been spraying the theaters with laughing gas.
Anderson, a talented second banana moving up to comedic leading-man status, plays Malcolm King, the sort of arrogant business tycoon who, in a demonstration of how far racial equality has come, has in the past generally been played by elderly Caucasians. Desperate to save his fortune from the clutches of the rapacious wife (Kellita Smith) who he is in the process of divorcing, he decides to stage his own kidnapping. He hires the brother (Charlie Murphy) of his ditzy mistress (Regina Hall) to do the deed, but the ex-con, who clearly has had his brains rattled by prison, mistakenly snatches a parking lot employee (Donald Faison) who has been using King's name to snare women.
Meanwhile, two other kidnapping plots have been put into effect, one planned by a disgruntled ex-employee (Nicole Parker) and the other by a loser fast-food worker (Mohr) who lives with his deaf grandmother (insert your own cheap gags here). The latter is the one who actually winds up with the prize, but complications, as they say, ensue.
Devoid of anything resembling wit or even guiltily amusing tasteless gags, the film lurches from one haplessly staged sequence to another, with the performers vainly struggling to infuse humor into the proceedings. While some of the actors actually manage to be amusing (Murphy brings a real wild-eyed intensity to his role as the sexually confused ex-con), mostly they founder amid the mediocrity. This is particularly true of Mohr, who brings an ill-advised but haplessly unfunny intensity to his role as the desperately grungy kidnapper.
KING'S RANSOM
New Line Cinema
Credits:
Director: Jeff Byrd
Screenwriter: Wayne Conley
Producer: Daryl Taja
Director of Photography: Robert McLachlan
Editor: Jeff Cooper
Music: Marcus Miller
Production Designer: Kalina Ivanov.
Cast:
Malcolm King: Anthony Anderson
Corey: Jay Mohr
Renee: Kellita Smith
Angela: Nicole Parker
Peaches: Regina Hall
Miss Gladys: Loretta Devine
Andre: Donald Faison
Kim: Leila Arcieri
Brooke Mayo: Brooke D'Orsay
Herb Clarke: Charlie Murphy.
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running time: 97 minutes.
- 5/19/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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