The Tucker-Chan partnership lost its novelty and freshness ages ago, so director Brett Ratner and screenwriter Jeff Nathanson send the stars to Paris in order to get a little cultural friction going. There, Tucker and Chan bully cab drivers and henchmen, frolic and croon at a burlesque show, and battle evil Chinese mobsters. The action and comedy are largely segregated: Tucker riffs and improvises through a series of comic setpieces, while Chan kicks and punches through increasingly non-acrobatic fight scenes. The filmmakers take advantage of their setting with a battery of hoary French stereotypes, most notably a comic-relief cab driver who begins the film sneering belligerently at the United States, but ends it a flag-waving, John Wayne-emulating wannabe American. Living legends Roman Polanski and Max von Sydow have been roped into supporting roles, but this is nevertheless the kind of basic-cable slot-plugger-to-be that audiences forget about even before it's over.
The end-credits outtakes once again provide many, if not all, of the film's highlights. Just a few minutes of Jackie Chan mangling the English language and proposing increasingly perverted—if not downright illegal—pornographic movies to watch on hotel pay-per-view provide more laughter, fun, and energy than the 90 minutes preceding them. Maybe next time, Ratner and company can skip the movie altogether and just run an hour and a half of outtakes. For a series devoted to giving audiences exactly what they want, it'd be pretty damn appropriate.
