I watched Paul Blart - Mall Cop over the weekend and there’s nothing great about the script and the jokes are mildy amusing, but for some reason Kevin James seemed to make the whole thing work. I was not bored.

He also made me laugh on the sheer strength of his character acting. He really is the new lovable fat guy actor.

We’ve lost the other fat guys: John Candy, Chris Farley, John Goodman (oh wait, he’s still alive isn’t he?). Isn’t it awful we encourage these comedians to abuse themselves for our entertainment? After all, the way Kevin James is looking he’s bound to die of a heart attack in the next two years. My wife noted that he looked like he had gained weight since his TV show “King of Queens.”

And he wasn’t the only fat one in the movie. Surprisingly the casting director didn’t go for the “pretty people.” Everyone except for the villains looked normal, like you and me and our neighbors and generally speaking people you would expect to find working at a mall.

Even the stereotypical jackass that competes for the affections of the love interest is average with a bad hairdo and weak build. Usually the competition in these sorts of comedies ends up being a jock type with loads of muscles.

But what I really found interesting was the casting for Paul Blart’s daughter. It went to Raini Rodriguez, a very plump but charismatic little girl. This is the girl who would be teased in junior high for her weight, but she can tell all those snots to go to hell–she’s starring in a movie.

They did not pick Raini for her outer beauty; they went with the girl who could show confidence in her inner self despite inheriting a weight problem from her Dad. And she is also half-Mexican in the film, recognizing the fact that we are increasingly becoming a blended nation (Paul Blart married an illegal to give her citizenship, then she runs off on him).

It’s like they took a crap script and made it good. The elements are all there. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the setting is in a mall which most Americans have a nostalgia for. Most likely the audience is seeing Mall Cop in the Mall Theater.

So top notch on marketing. It would have been nice if they could have made the jokes funnier but Kevin James is worth the price of a ticket. I hope this is his start to more comedies, funnier ones. And if he’s backed by Happy Madison Productions hopefully he won’t go down the Rob Schneider road, who is often ignored for making some rather good comedies too–just in bad taste.

Note to parents: This film is pretty much family safe. There is one ambiguous scene where we are left to imagine a dog possibly getting hurt. And there’s one innuendo. But as for action movie type swearing–it’s absent. And the violence consists of the kind you might see in a Three Stooges film with some gunfire thrown in. Very innocent overall compared to most releases.

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