Does anyone out there remember Fair Game? You know, the rubbish thriller that paired up one or other of the Baldwin brothers with Cindy Crawford? Naturally, there were lots of billboards (so imposingly grand in scale that one could count the hairs sprouting from the mole) featuring Cindy in her happiness-is-a-warm-gun pose visibly struggling to even act for the photo. Well, when Sky get around to making a disaster show entitled When Models Act, Gisele Bundchen’s turn in Taxi may well get higher billing than Cindy’s inauspicious debut.
Just as well that the screenplay demands little more from the Teutonic Brazilian mutant than bending over and being seven feet tall. Besides, there are worse casting problems in this lukewarm buddy comedy. The characteristically deafening Queen Latifah heads up an undignified bunch in this remake of Luc Besson’s no-brainer vroom-vroom flick. She’s a bouncy testosterone-fuelled chick with a penchant for shiny cars and an ambition to drive a taxi. Alas, when this vaulting ambition comes to pass, she has the misfortune to pick up Jimmy Fallon’s inept cop. Her misfortune, however, is our catastrophe. Within seconds, this whining goofball has you yearning for the more subtle comedic talents of fellow Saturday Night Live alumni like Adam Sandler, Rob Schneider and David Spade. Yep, he really is that irksome.
In between irritating exchanges, car pile-ups, police superiors shouting from behind desks, go-faster techno-babble and general idiocy, there’s a plot which sees Latifah and the thoroughly punchable Fallon zipping about after Gisele and fellow supermodel criminal masterminds (ahem), a bunch of giraffe-legged pouters who are consistently referred to within the script as ‘Amazonian’. Sorry, but these girls patently lack the outstanding criteria – a left breast and a right one.
I suppose I should point out that the car-chases are pretty good (although you could just as easily bang on Grand Theft Auto) and Ann-Margret’s turn as Fallon’s marinated mom is her most amusing performance since she rolled around in baked beans for The Who. But this Taxi should really only be hailed by technophile twelve-year-old girls who long for the sweet, oily embrace of some metal-shop ingénue.