Code Name: The Cleaner (3/10)
by Tony Medley
Did Lawrence Olivier change
his name to Lawrence the Actor? Did Bob Hope change his name to Bob the
Comedian? Did Bing Crosby change his name to Bing the Singer? So how bad
does a guy named Cedric have to be to change his name to Cedric The
Entertainer? Generally, if someone volunteers, that he tells the truth,
you probably can figure out he doesn’t. So if someone tells me he’s
Cedric The Entertainer, then I figure he’s not very entertaining.
Unfortunately, the
supposition has been validated by his movies that I’ve seen; just to
name a few, there were “Barbershop,” “Be Cool,” “Lemony Snicket,” and
“Barbershop 2,” dogs all.
In this one, he’s joined by
two women who probably won’t soon grace the stage at the Oscar
ceremonies, Lucy Liu and Nicollette Sheridan. Liu has a string of
credits as unimpressive as Cedric’s, including the two “Charlie’s
Angels” debacles, “Lucky Number Slevin,” and “Domino.” Ugh. Sheridan is
a TV actress most notable for a long stint on “Knots Landing,” and more
recently on “Desperate Housewives.” I didn’t and don’t watch either, but
I hope that she doesn’t give the embarrassing performances in those that
she gives here. Even she must have been chagrined to have to strip down
to little more than a string bikini and try to do a sexual dance for
Cedric. This is one of those scenes that can cause the audience to go
into terminal cringing, praying it will soon end.
The story might have been a
good one. Jake (Cedric) awakens with amnesia next to a dead body. The
rest of the movie is an attempt at humor as Jake tries to figure out if
he’s really some kind of highly trained, deadly agent, sort of a
bumbling Matthew Bourne. The humor falls as flat as the body next to
which Jake awakens.
Here’s the opening line of
the Production Notes:
When
New Line Cinema presented Robert Adetuyi’s original screenplay for “Code
Name: The Cleaner” to (the) producers…, they immediately recognized it
was a great idea for a movie. A few drafts later, Cedric the
Entertainer came aboard to star…During the period of script rewrites
by George Gallo, Cedric helped to shape his character into a role
tailor-made for his comedic talents.
Man, if what we see on the
screen is after “a few drafts” and a “period of script rewrites,” I
would hate to have to read Adetuyi’s original. Of course, there is
always the possibility that the suits took a good screenplay and made it
immeasurably worse. It was a great idea. Alas, the result is another
opportunity lost.
January 3, 2007
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