Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Jury Duty (1995)

Starring: Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci
Directed by John Fortenberry

“Jury Duty” is a movie that is loosely based upon "12 Angry Men," and centers around a loser who is selected for, you guessed it, jury duty, and holds up the deliberation in order to take advantage of the nice hotel where he is staying during the course of the trial.

Yeah...this movie sucks. One of the biggest differences between the 1957 classic (which can be seen on television in one scene and is used as a minor plot device) and this film is that the former is a drama while this is a comedy. The other big difference is that the former starred Henry Fonda, one of the best actors of all time, while this one stars Pauly Shore, who should not even have an acting career. Now all that being said... why was this made? Did they really expect people to pay money for this? Very little of this movie provided any humor, and the few times I did laugh, it was mostly due to the fact that the gags were so pathetically unfunny by nature that they actually became funny by default, if that makes any sense at all.

Now to be fair, I am being lenient in terms of my criticism, because as bad as it is, I did not feel like I was "harmed" by it. I would compare it to something like "Dude, Where's My Car?": it is not funny, but you are aware that you are seeing something stupid and are just watching it for the sake of wasting your time. That being said, at least "Dude" had a catchy title and had the sensibility to come up with its own weird story line as opposed to trashing the legacy of a movie of far superior quality.

Therefore, I do not recommend this film.

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