Product: Taxi (Full Screen Edition) (2004)
Rating: 1.0
Duh
A genre bridging feature (comedy-action-sexploitation) where a hapless NYC cop teams with a fast-driving mouthy cabbie to chase four leggy foreign supermodels robbing banks. Very little of the comedy works, the action sequences would have been great in 1970 but the advent of digital effects takes most of the thrill out of this kind of stuff (if they are totally fake who cares), and the sexploitation is a teasing afterthought.The failure to deliver on the sexploitation part is especially curious because it would have been the easiest of the three to get right. They certainly promoted that angle but the models are only on the screen for about 4% of the running time and even then are mostly in nonflattering disquises (the second unit probably shot all their stuff in one weekend before INS deported them). The brainlessness of the producers in this regard rivals Pamela Anderson's awful "Barbwire" where she was dressed in sexy black outfits only to be filmed entirely in shadows. And they wonder why their films lose money."Taxi" wastes no time losing its wheels, they fall off with the opening scene of an "svelt" bike messenger (obviously not Latifah) racing through the city, finally stopping to remove his helmet to reveal Latifah herself. Insulting your intelligence at the beginning at least lowers your expectations for the rest of the film.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.