James has heart in ‘Paul Blart’

“Paul Blart: Mall Cop” has earned $83.4 million since it opened in mid-January and topped the box office in its first two weekends.

Wow. Is this what we’re coming to America? Really? Is this the standard?

But seriously, I had to see it too. I also watched a black and white movie on Mount Pony last weekend about silent film comics from the 1930s so I had built up some cultural capital, if such a thing exists. After all that serious slapstick, I deserved some banal amusement.

And banal “Mall Cop” was.

No Academy Awards coming this way. Still, I love Kevin James; his character on “King of Queens” (formerly of CBS, now in syndication) is a lot like my husband. He’s one helluva standup as well.
James stars as the title character in “Mall Cop,” the latest asinine movie from Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. It’s pretty damn funny in parts, but mostly because Kevin James is just a funny guy.

Poor Blart is a security guard in a mall in New Jersey — is there any other kind? — and he gets no respect. Not even from the elderly guy scooting around on a Rascal who nearly runs him over or the overweight woman in Victoria’s Secret who basically sits on him.

Blart is no small person himself, thanks in large part to his mother (Shirley Knight), who he lives with and who comforts him with food. He likes to fill in the cracks in his pie with peanut butter. True story.

Blart gets around one of those upright Segway scooters and it’s so slow even the small, yipping neighborhood dog can catch up to bite him. The big guy also has hypoglycemia and so for medical reasons (uh-huh) he has to eat candy bars every few minutes to keep from passing out.

He keeps Pixie Sticks in his shirt pocket at all times.

Passing out on the obstacle course during his New Jersey State Trooper test is why promotion eludes Blart, but he’s content being a mall security guard, ahem, security officer for the past 10 years or so.

It’s a serious job in which he takes great pride even though Blart doesn’t get a gun.

“What we do have is our voices,” he says.

He’s not so great with the ladies and never gets invited to go out to the mall bar after work with fellow mall employees.

Blart’s main love is his daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez), whose mother, an obese Mexican, married Blart, got her green card and then left.

As Blart settles in for another depressing holiday season without a lady love, a girl named Amy (Jayma Mays) gets a job at the hair accessory/extensions kiosk in the mall.

She immediately catches Blart’s eye and actually treats him pretty nicely.

And I can see why. He’s a big teddy bear.

Now, for the first time ever, Blart gets invited to the after-hours get together and for the first time ever, Blart gets drunk. Really drunk. Even stupider drunk than Kevin James is funny. So drunk he gets his entire back tattooed and doesn’t remember a thing about it. He shows up looking hot in a studded leather jacket.

And in spite of his girth, Blart can move. This agility and ability to tumble around on the floor like a sniper will prove most beneficial when a gang of extreme sports “parcour” criminals take over the mall on Black Friday.

Turns out, Blart is the only security officer left on the inside. That’s because he was playing Guitar Hero, wallowing away his heavy drinking woes from the night before, as the crooks locked the place down.

It takes way too long for Blart to wrangle them all up and so I got a little sleepy toward the end of “Mall Cop.” I didn’t fall asleep though only because the movie theater, in which I was the only person, was freezing!

The movie runs an hour and a half, but an hour would have sufficed, about as long as two new back-to-back episodes of “King of Queens.” If only.

Not the worst movie I’ve ever seen. But not nearly as good as the “Wild Laurel and Hardy Pie Throwing Party” or Laurel and Hardy in the “Early Days of Road Rage” that I saw the other night on Mount Pony.

Wait for “Paul Blart” on DVD. It should be out by summer.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop
Rated PG
Director: Steve Carr
Starring: Kevin James, Keir O’Donnell, Jayma Mays, Raini Rodriguez and Shirley Knight
1 hour 31 minutes
Two stars out of five