The Setup
Back when we first set out on our bold mission to watch terrible movies, cook theme dinners, and drink our way through them, we developed the idea of the Grownvengers. Although our unforeseen obsession with Fast & Furious set us back a few months, we’re picking it up just in time for The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Instead of watching the wildly popular origin stories of Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, and Captain America which culminated in the critically-acclaimed Avengers, we’ll be watching films by Chris Rock, Kevin James, David Spade, and Adam Sandler leading up to Grownups 2. Yes, the second one – we’re just going to jump right in.
We’re starting this series off with Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
The Food
We kept it simple and went with a classic, stereotypical cop favorite: donuts. We were disappointed, hurt, and shocked that, although Paul Blart has a form of narcolepsy that’s triggered by sugar deficiency, he doesn’t actually consume a single donut in Paul Blart Mall Cop. Whatever, Paul. We’re sure our donuts are better than your floor candy.
As of now, our kitchen lacks a donut maker, so we decided to make ours the old fashioned way. We used a recipe for raised yeast donuts and fried them ourselves.
We whipped up two different glazes, vanilla and raspberry, and topped our donuts off with some sprinkles and fancy decorative sugar (thanks, Louise!).
The donuts were soft, chewy, the first day. Unfortunately good things never last, and by the same time the next day, they were as stale as can be. Teaching us all a valuable lesson in enjoying everything in the moment. Well maybe not everything… It was tough to enjoy Paul Blart. Almost as tough as day-old donuts.
The Drinks
When you really think about it, is there anything that goes better with donuts than coffee? And whenever there is a cliche shot of a cop with one hand in the donut box, you can bet that his other is clutching for dear life onto a cup of coffee. While the Munch crew is well-versed in brewing exceptional cups of coffee, we decided to go one step further and make it extra special. Think of it as us pre-balancing out the universe because of the “quality” of what would soon be gracing our TV screen. Regular coffee just wouldn’t cut it.
Behold, the Coffee Margarita, mixing the wonderful taste of margaritas with the health and mind benefits of coffee. Honestly, what could be better? The drink itself is really simple: mix together 1 ounce of Espresso flavored tequila with 4 ounces of coffee, and add a little bit of of citrus flavored simple syrup for good measure. Cover the rim of the glass with a cocoa powder, cinnamon, and sugar mixture, and you have yourself a refreshing coffee drink perfectly suited for summer afternoons.
The Rules
- Drink whenever Paul Blart hits the floor.
- Drink whenever Paul Blart gets hurt.
- Drink whenever the movie references Die Hard (either indirectly or directly – it depends on how much you want to drink).
The Movie
If you’re using this blog post to vet whether or not you should see Paul Blart Mall Cop 2, you have come to the right place because we have some very important input for you. In no way, at all, ever, do we suggest seeing PBMC 2. Frankly, we’re surprised it was even made, because the first movie is terrible.
.@Andre_Wyatt: “If this were PG-13, there’d be a better joke right now.” #PaulBlart
— Munch (@getmunchedup)
PBMC 1 starts out with an extremely dark and in-poor-taste tale about the origin of Paul’s daughter. Her illegal immigrant mother abandoned the family and left Paul to raise her on his own, which was clearly a way to demonize immigrants coming to this country and pander to certain segments of the audience. But, Paul must be doing something right (offscreen, of course) because his daughter is quick-witted, full of wisdom beyond her years, and stable-footed. In other words, she is the complete opposite of Paul Blart.
The film is mostly a series of slapstick gags involving Paul falling on the floor, taking his job way too seriously, and being the least prepared or skillful mall cop that has ever existed. This movie was probably meant to be a kids movie that could appeal to parents by constantly referencing Die Hard, but they really didn’t go far enough in connecting the two movies. We recently watched Die Hard last Christmas, so it was very fresh in our memory, yet we still found ourselves frequently asking each other, “Was that supposed to be a Die Hard reference?” over and over. It would have been great to see Paul Blart grip some carpet with his toes, walk over glass, or shimmy down an elevator shaft, but instead the ties were very loose. For instance, Paul Blart was able to contact the police from inside the locked down building and refused to talk to the hotshot negotiator. Yes, that happened in Die Hard, but it’s not what was memorable about that movie. Also, the bad guy was a complete joke and it left us all missing Snape/Hans Gruber just a little bit too much. Seriously, if you are creating a film that mimics a pretty infamous villain, at the very least, you have to make the audience believe he is actually a villain and not just some guy they picked up off the street.
There’s a lot of broken glass in #PaulBlart but nobody has walked on it. They really half-assed their commitment to being like Die Hard…
— Munch (@getmunchedup)
The Ratings
Andre: To be honest, I liked Die Hard better. Paul Blart was boring and not at all funny. I would only recommend this movie to people who are, for whatever reason, want to watch Kevin James fall down a few dozen times with a threadbare plot connecting each of the falls. Or, they may want to hold out for Paul Blart Mall Cop 3: Hit the Floor!
Leanna: On a scale of floor candy to Fran’s Chocolates, this movie is the floor candy. And not just because Kevin James actually consumes floor candy in a scene. This movie was so lazy that they didn’t even come up with an original plot since the bulk of it was literally lifted from Die Hard but lacked the one-liners, impressive stunts, and beautiful, long-haired German villains that made Die Hard an instant classic. I liked Kevin James in Hitch, but this is really just awful.
Ben: 15%? I don’t even know. While not on the level of Secretariat boring, this movie was just mediocre across the board. There may have been a good comedic movie in there, but it was hamstrung by it trying to appeal to the whole family with actors and directors that are not used to doing that. And man, the jokes about the illegal immigrants left a pretty bad taste in my mouth once the movie had finished. That movie was bookended by two poor jokes, and a whole lot of boring in between.
