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Bubbling just beneath the surface of Showtime is a good idea. Actually, it's more like two or three ideas that constantly fight for screentime. This film doesn't just have its cake and eat it too; it has the whole bakery.
Detective Mitch Preston (Robert De Niro) has a drug bust interrupted by the media and a brash, cop-slash-actor named Trey Sellars (Eddie Murphy). When Preston's partner is shot, he angrily shoots the camera out of the hands of a pestering newsman, and the tiff lands him in a new reality cop show produced by Chase Renzi (Rene Russo). In the first of many errors and oddities in the movie, that injured partner is never heard from again or alluded to for the remainder of the film.
De Niro's best gag is his speech to a classroom of small children to open the picture about how TV cops don't act like real cops. Funny thing is, as the movie progresses, his character and Murphy's begin to act more and more like the clichés they supposedly clash so strongly with. In a smarter movie, De Niro's diatribe could have played as ironic comment; here, it only shows to point out how truly lame the movie is. While a spoof of a reality based cop show could be funny, the team of writers and director Tom Dey (Who made the far superior Shanghai Noon a few years ago; see that movie instead) seem to be on unsure footing, and instead of slamming the TV industry, they really let them off light (The harshest thing they seem to be able to say about network execs is they like to play ping pong at work). Russo's character has a glint of fiendish delight in her eye, but her dialogue and actions rarely match the actress' enthusiasm.
With little on screen to keep my attention, my mind began to wander, and that's dangerous in a movie with this many plot holes. For instance; if Showtime (the name given to the cop show) is such a popular smash, why doesn't anyone seem to recognize De Niro and Murphy when they are on the job? For that matter, if their investigation of smuggler and all around mean guy Vargas is being televised, why the heck hasn't someone mentioned to him that they are on his trail? Then again, given this villain's actions maybe I shouldn't be surprised; this is the same joker who is very angry at an associate for using his new supergun without approval, jeopardizing a deal, and then dispatches him how? By using about ten of the superguns to level his entire house, of course! That's like putting out a fire with a bigger fire.
Occasionally, Showtime gets laughs, but there simply aren't enough for the film's nearly two hour running time. Even worse, the really smart gags suggest that this movie really could have been on to something, if only they had put in a few more drafts of the script. Murphy mugs and talks as fast as he can with minimal results, and De Niro looks flat out bored through most of this. After a completely unnecessary fistfight between cops and gangsters (That remarkably results in no injuries and no arrests) Russo's character shouts `That's great television!' Perhaps it's great television, but it's far from a great movie.


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