HELD UP A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 2000 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): **
In Steve Rash's slapstick comedy, HELD UP, an amateur robber named Rodrigo, played charmingly by Eduardo Yanez, holds up the Sip & Zip convenience store in the middle of the Arizona desert. Almost accidentally, Rodrigo takes all of the store's occupants hostage.
The local, good ol' boy sheriff assembles a rag-tag group of trigger-happy hunters to guard the store while he negotiates the release of the hostages. For his instruction manual, the sheriff breaks the plastic seal on his shrink-wrapped copy of the FBI's official hostage situation manual.
In the story's opening, Michael Dawson (Jamie Foxx) and his fiancée Rae (Nia Long) are tooling down the highway when Rae announces that she has to go to the bathroom immediately, and it's not number one. We then have several disgusting scenes in which the lovely, mini-skirted Rae waddles around holding her rear as they search for a place for her to defecate. After she finally locates a restroom at the Sip & Zip, the story picks up some. Of course, after such an inauspicious beginning, it would be hard for it get any worse.
After an argument, Rae leaves Michael behind at the store, where he shortly becomes one of the hostages. And not just any hostage, but the chief negotiator for the stickup man.
Typical of the lame incidents in the story is the one about the killer Dorito. After a hail of bullets following the explosion of a hot dog in the microwave, Michael believes he has been hit in the face by a big piece of flying glass. It turns out, instead, to be a shallow cut from a Dorito propelled by the hot dog. The hostages want to know whether it is "BBQ or Cool Ranch."
Another subplot has Michael being mistaken for the singer Puff Daddy by a local videogame jock at the store. Most of the others believe him to be Mike Tyson.
The town, for a variety of reasons, is close to bankruptcy, which means they have to keep reneging on their agreements about the hostage situation. Although Michael negotiates their sending his fiancée two dozen roses, the town can only afford one left-over bereavement bouquet from a funeral.
Even if it isn't much of a comedy, at least it's a good-spirited one. The cast gives it their all, but the material is hopeless.
The movie even fails my Grand Canyon test. When a film, as HELD UP does, throws in some footage of a beautiful place like the Grand Canyon in the hopes of giving the production a little class and then makes the site look dull with ugly, washed-out colors, you know the picture is in trouble.
HELD UP runs 1:29. It is rated PG-13 for mild profanity and comic violence and would be acceptable for kids around 10 and up.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: http://www.InternetReviews.com
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