Ménage à Trois

Movie Review: Rush Hour 3

Rush Hour 3 is the 3rd installment of this East meets West comedy-action flick series. Like the previous two films, this is a combination of buddy cop movie and martial arts action - it's a brilliant scheme to bring in many different viewers, but was lacking in the fire of the first installment.

We open with Chris Tucker, Detective James Carter, directing traffic in downtown LA. Immediately, your brain tries to think back to the 2nd movie and try and remember what happened to bust him down to foot patrol. However, very quickly you forget about the previous movies as Tucker starts singing and dancing to Prince in middle of the street - using his dance moves to direct the cars through the intersection. And almost predictably, he causes an accident - and laughter ensues.

Cut to Jackie Chan, Inspector Lee, who is body man to the Chinese ambassador - again, what was the plot line from the previous movies? Thus begins the problem with this sequel.

Unless you have watched (and rewatched) the previous films, odds are you don't remember all the fine plot points. I don't mind any "third" referencing the previous two, but here it seemed like they were trying to make a point by assuming the audience was made up of diehards.

Brett Ratner, who directed all three of the films, has a very different style of making movies. He isn’t really about style and cinematography, he is about having a blast on the screen – something to entertain the audience and bring them into the party. He does his best to recreate the formula that has been successful in the past movies, but this one lacks in luster. It seems like X-Men: The Last Stand all over again.

This time around we take the party to Paris and the duo is working on bringing down the Triads, a super secret society of Chinese Crime Lords. The boys are marked for death and will do anything to stay alive. They find the one girl (French with a whole lot of cleavage) who holds the answers and then fight to protect her from the evil Triads. They go so far as to interrupt her burlesque show trying to keep her from being killed – and a musical routine breaks out.

That said – I laughed my ass off through the entire movie and so did the rest of the audience. We were laughing so much that we missed some lines – so you had to laugh quickly and turn back to listening intently almost immediately. We even found ourselves giggling long after some of the jokes because Chris Tucker is that good. Sure, he has mellowed as his paycheck has increased over the years, but how can you dislike the goofy, high-pitched antics of him played off the not-always-straight-man, Jackie Chan?

The action was great – an entire fight on the Eiffel Tower, and down the Eiffel Tower? Swords, kicks, flying furniture, breaking glass, leaps, jumps, high flying people, singing, dancing and one very tall Chinese man – this is what I call entertainment, even if most of it is predictable. It certainly isn’t movie making at its best, but it isn’t the worst “3” this summer. There are still a couple of sequels due out this year, but at least this is the last “3” – until next year, I am sure.

Thank goodness Chan and Tucker are so likeable and easy to watch.