MR. MAGOO

CINTAINAS SPOILERS JDSIUHZKAN DJHFSBDW7682

Blindness is hilarious, isn't it? The opportunities for comedy afforded by not being able to see things properly, like oncoming traffic or the faces of your loved ones, are practically infinite. It's such a laughter goldmine that Disney actually stuck a disclaimer on the end of this nonsense stating that it's not a genuine portrait of such disabilities, probably when the relevant charitable organisations complained and the film was quickly whisked out of cinemas and straight onto video, as a terrible mistake Of Which We Shall Never Speak Again And Let's All Just Pretend It Never Happened.

Well, it did. Based on the old UPA cartoons about a bald pensioner with chronic nearsightedness that's constantly causing him to mistake pot plants for women with green hair and fall down lift shafts, Mr. Magoo is an exercise in unsophisticated slapstick for toddlers, village idiots and the very easily amused. Simplistic to the point of insulting simpletons, it stars Leslie Nielsen as the bumbling canning millionaire who gets mixed up with jewel thieves in a farcical succession of pratfalls, chases, silly disguises and hilarious misunderstandings.

Leslie Nielsen should be a dab hand at this sort of tomfoolery, but he's stuck with the tics and mannerisms of the cartoon character. Stephen Tobolowsky is the FBI man who browns up as Indian at one point for absolutely no reason, Malcolm McDowell is on villain duties and Jennifer Garner is the love interest. If there's anything of interest here, it's that director Stanley Tong and DP Jingle Ma have a long history of Hong Kong action movies and Jackie Chan films, so at least the idiocy and blundering about is competently staged. Other than that, this is really for people who got confused by Beverly Hills Ninja.

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