Column:

Plot sacrificed for lack of subtlety

By Dan Moore

Published March 2, 2007

If you like "Reno 911!" the TV show — well, you've already seen and probably enjoyed the movie. Many of the Comedy Central series' recurring characters appear, and there are numerous nods to the show's subplots. Your opinion of the show won't change on the film's account, but as a movie to be judged by itself, "Reno 911!: Miami!" is a series of sometimes-funny sketches that don't particularly fit well into their format.

"Reno" is supposed to be a mockumentary. Woody Allen, a pioneer of the format, once theorized that it was successful because of the inherent seriousness we expect from documentaries. In a mockumentary, every minor disruption and deviation is funnier than it would be in a typical comedy because it's so unexpected. 2006's "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" probed the limits of the genre. Many of the laughs were ridiculous and over-the-top, as was its supposed host, but the movie's frame — a PBS-style documentary about life in another country — still made sense.

"Reno" forgets about its frame entirely. The movie's plot begins when its cast of bumbling social deviants is invited to a police convention in Miami. A mix-up gets them kicked out of the convention. As a result, they avoid a terrorist attack that leaves every single police officer in Miami quarantined inside. Some suspension of disbelief is not too much to ask, but "Reno" supposes that the National Guard has ceased to exist, and that every single precinct in Miami would send all of its officers to a convention at the same time.

It undermines its own format with reckless abandon. At various points in the movie, the unseen documentarian witnesses murder without so much as a yelp. On more than one occasion, officers are kidnapped by a confused drug lord and thrown into a panel van, which proceeds to drive off. Somehow the documentarian begins the next scene on the drug lord's yacht, recording like he's an invisible movie camera, instead of a guy with a camcorder who's following around several captives.

The problem is that some of the movie's funniest gags involve the characters realizing the camera is on them, while others make it impossible to rationalize a cameraman's presence. If they had been more consistently self-knowing about the improbable camera work, they would have made the first ever mock-mockumentary. But instead, the filmmakers cater to the lowest possible denominator.

When the movie finds the time to be more subtle — when characters aren't masturbating, or getting their watches caught in pubic hair — it has its moments. Patton Oswalt is consistently hilarious as a depressed low-level politician who lives with his mom, and the film's Tony Montana pastiche has a truly amazing pay-off at the end. But for the most part, it should be considered four consecutive episodes of "Reno 911!" If that sounds like a good time, you've probably already bought your tickets.