As part of my punishment for losing last year’s Summer Box Office Challenge, I, Eric D. Snider, had to watch “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” three nights in a row and keep a running diary. Here is that diary.
FIRST VIEWING
1:40 – The wife that Paul Blart got at the end of the first movie left him after six days of marriage, which is longer than you’d think.
2:50 – A kid at the mall slaps Paul Blart in the face.
3:05 – Paul Blart’s mom gets run over by a truck. Man, EVERYBODY from the first movie is getting out of this one as fast as they can.
4:15 – Paul Blart gets invited to some security guard conference in Las Vegas, which is totally a thing, I’m sure. His daughter Maya gets accepted to UCLA but declines to tell him for reasons I don’t understand.
6:15 – Paul Blart is punched playfully but painfully in the throat by a colleague.
9:35 – Paul Blart has a vibrating fork to make him eat slower.
11:00 – Paul Blart thinks the hotel manager, Divina, is flirting with him because she’s offering him the hotel services he paid for.
14:20 – It’s a Sony movie, so the bad guys wear Sony watches, which look like Apple watches with “SONY” written on them.
15:00 – Paul Blart dumbly bets at the craps table according to whatever the dealer tells him. Because he’s an idiot.
15:45 – Maya is embarrassed to have Paul Blart spying on her when she’s talking to a cute boy, and Paul Blart’s feelings are hurt by this. Because he’s a child.
17:00 – Due to an offhand remark, Paul Blart thinks he’s giving the keynote speech at tonight’s conference, even though nobody asked him to and they don’t have people give keynote speeches by just calling them out of the crowd. What does he think a “keynote speech” is?
18:55 – Paul Blart is hit by a car while showing off on the Segway.
26:00 – Maya tells cute valet Lane that her dad doesn’t support her, which is nonsense. Why are you trying to make conflict where none exists, movie?
26:30 – When Paul Blart gets back to the hotel room and Maya isn’t there, he assumes she’s been abducted and calls hotel security, because he’s a panicky idiot.
31:00 – Another mall cop and his wife tell Paul Blart how sad he’ll be when Maya goes to college.
32:15 – They’re trying to make me feel sad for Paul Blart, and this makes me angry.
32:45 – White-haired suit-wearing criminal and his crew are planning to steal a Van Gogh from the casino/hotel. They have a guy “on the inside.”
33:50 – Paul Blart mansplains to a woman why it’s OK for Officer Panero to keep hitting on her even though she said no.
34:55 – Officer Panero, who’s actually the keynote speaker, is passed out drunk, so Paul Blart will get to give a speech after all, just like he imagined in his crazy fantasy world.
35:40 – The hotel manager has to keep telling Paul Blart that she isn’t hitting on him.
36:05 – Paul Blart is wildly overconfident with this woman. WHY? WHO TOLD HIM HE WAS GOOD AT ANYTHING?
39:20 – Paul Blart is beaten up by a peacock.
41:00 – The emcee says everyone was expecting to hear Panero’s speech, which means it was public knowledge who the keynote speaker was.
42:55 – Oh, now Paul Blart gets to be sad because Maya isn’t there to hear the speech that she didn’t know he was giving.
49:15 – Big, dumb, hypoglycemic Paul Blart is revived from a stupor by a few drops from a girl’s melting ice cream cone.
50:40 – Paul Blart punches a very elderly maid in the gut.
53:30 – Maya has been taken by the bad guys, and Paul Blart is on the case like a porky Liam Neeson.
54:30 – A hotel employee named Muhrtelle eats a very brown banana for no reason other than to gross Paul Blart out.
56:50 – Hidden in a bulletproof suitcase, Paul Blart rolls down stairs and crashes through a window into a pool.
58:00 – Paul Blart spots a fake security guard because the buttons on his uniform are a kind that the uniform manufacturer doesn’t use anymore.
1:04:45 – Paul Blart runs into a sliding glass door.
1:06:25 – Maya and Lane are locked in the bad guy’s suite, but she uses some MacGuyver-ish trick her dad taught her to unlock the door.
1:06:50 – Villain mentions casually that he’s DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO OATMEAL.
1:14:00 – I laughed! Paul Blart and the villain are both trying to out-crazy the other, and Paul Blart says, “I will crawl inside you and lay eggs!”
1:16:15 – “Non-lethal. I get it now.” Wait, he thought he was KILLING all those henchmen? Good grief.
1:23:00 – Yep, there’s Chekov’s oatmeal.
1:23:15 – “Always bet on Blart.” That’s what Paul Blart says as his tagline after he defeats the villain. Because it’s Las Vegas, see, where there’s gambling. And because it sounds like “always bet on black,” which is what Wesley Snipes said in that one movie.
1:25:35 – Divina kisses Paul Blart on the cheek but goes back to Eduardo. A kiss on the cheek is all you get, fatty!
1:26:45 – Maya says she’s going to turn down UCLA, stay in New Jersey and go to community college so she can be with Paul Blart!!
1:27:00 – Oh, good, Paul Blart refuses to let her do this. She’s going to UCLA. Whew.
1:28:55 – Paul Blart is kicked by a police horse.
SECOND VIEWING
1:30 – Actually, I bet they wrote Jayma Mays and Shirley Knight out of the movie because the characters weren’t necessary, not because the actresses didn’t want to be in it.
1:50 – I mean, I’m sure they didn’t want to be in it, either.
2:45 – The mall mom looks like Felicity Huffman but isn’t.
4:00 – Paul Blart says he thinks they’re finally “honoring him” at this convention, but they aren’t. He’s just invited, along with hundreds of other security guards.
5:45 – “Surprise keynote speaker.” IF IT WERE YOU, YOU WOULD KNOW IT WAS YOU!
9:00 – Did they ever explain why caucasian Paul Blart’s daughter Maya is Latina?
9:35 – Why would a vibrating fork make you eat slower?
13:00 – “Security is a mission. Not an intermission.” I don’t think that means anything.
16:40 – Fellow mall cop Sol Gundermutt has a black brace on his left forearm that they never explain.
20:20 – See, I think what it is, is they don’t know what a “keynote speech” is. They think it’s an award or something.
25:45 – Seriously, just because Maya’s not in the room, Paul Blart assumes she was abducted. How does someone this stupid get around?
27:20 – Why does Maya call Paul Blart on the hotel room phone instead of his cell?
28:40 – If Maya wanted to keep her UCLA acceptance a secret from Paul Blart, why did she bring the acceptance letter with her to Las Vegas?
36:45 – They’ve got exact replicas of all the artwork they’re stealing. That takes foresight.
42:30 – I might have spent the last several minutes reading Twitter.
42:45 – I returned just in time for Paul Blart to be sad that Maya isn’t at the banquet that she had no reason to be at.
43:45 – The mall cops at this convention all believe that being a mall cop is a calling. This is sad, right?
47:35 – Paul Blart falls asleep mid-threat, due to hypoglycemia.
48:25 – Lane the valet comes looking for Maya. All this gun-pointing and skulduggery is happening in a huge suite that’s connected to several other rooms, including one where Lane is throwing a party. The luxury suites at the Wynn casino are expansive.
54:20 – Why the rotten banana? It’s funny because it’s gross, but why is it there?
59:30 – The obligatory part in any dumb comedy where the clumsy hero stumbles into a live stage performance.
1:00:10 – This is Cirque du Soleil, or whatever the Wynn Resort equivalent is.
1:02:30 – Paul Blart plugs his vibrating fork into a random electrical wire he finds, then uses a stage-prop bow to shoot it like an arrow into Ramos’ chest.
1:09:45 – Paul Blart does a somersault off a Segway where it’s clearly him, not a stunt man. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Kevin James is agile for a big guy.
1:12:20 – I bet it’s fun to play the villain in movies like this. You get to be snarky to the idiots around you.
1:13:30 – The argument over who’s crazier is still funny.
1:15:45 – “Why are you wearing a cape?” “I came straight from a haircut.” I missed this last night. That’s funny.
1:23:00 – Oatmeal facial scrub saves the day.
THIRD VIEWING
2:30 – He says, “Like the song says, I’ve been to paradise, but I’ve never been to me.” He doesn’t sing it or anything, he just quotes the line, but it’s still listed in the music credits at the end. Did they have to pay for that?! That’s jacked up.
6:40 – Paul Blart insists on being called “Officer.”
9:50 – Oh, OK. The vibrating fork starts vibrating every few seconds, and when it does, you have to stop eating until it stops. Fair enough.
10:30 – The scene where Paul Blart thinks Divina was flirting with him is excruciating, more so the third time.
19:40 – Paul Blart says dismissively, “Cops think they’re all that.” Does he ever have a run-in with a cop? Does this pay off? (Spoiler: no.)
22:00 – How could you work on this movie as editor or sound mixer or any other job that would entail watching parts of it over and over again? Wouldn’t you go mad?
28:10 – “They don’t have time to help you play out your fantasies of being a real cop,” says Divina’s boyfriend, who Paul Blart perceives as his rival. The guy is totally right, but I don’t think the movie is making fun of Paul Blart.
31:30 – I don’t like that Ana Gasteyer is in this.
36:20 – So Divina actually is in love with him, she just doesn’t realize it. But he does. Because he’s so perceptive.
44:20 – “If being a security officer was easy, anyone could do it,” Paul Blart says. “Anyone CAN do it,” mutters Divina’s boyfriend. Once again, it’s funny because it’s true, but the movie doesn’t realize it.
44:45 – Supposedly there are security guards of all kinds here, but everything Paul Blart says is about mall cops specifically.
46:50 – If Maya hadn’t clumsily dropped the pepper spray, this would be over immediately.
1:06:20 – Copper wiring from light-up snowglobe, plus extra cell phone battery shorts out the electronic lock on the door. Good to know.
1:07:20 – Paul Blart just yells his room number and “Charge it, please,” as he shoplifts a drone from a store.
1:28:00 – You know, this isn’t too bad, and it’s not really violating the terms of the bet, if you just stare slightly above the TV and play circus music in your head instead of paying attention to the movie.