'Mr. Magoo' video cover

Mr. Magoo

1997

Director: Stanley Tong

Stars: Leslie Nielsen

Stanley Tong's first US movie is a live-action adaptation of the popular '60's US cartoon, where near-sighted policeman Magoo is on the trail of a stolen jewel. This is pretty much a one-joke movie (Magoo refuses to wear glasses and is always mixing things up) and it gets old pretty fast. There are a couple of decent sequences; not suprisingly, they're lifted from some HK movies such as the cooking scene in Private Eyes and the snowboarding chase from First Strike. Probably the biggest reason the movie doesn't work is that Tong and Nielsen didn't get along at all. Supposedly, Nielsen went as far as to try and get off the picture because he didn't want to do any stuntwork. Tong later told Asian Cult Cinema that "foreign actors are like that. First, they try to impress the director by begging to do some of their own stunts, but they always chicken out at the moment of truth." At any rate, little kids (or those easily entertained) may have some fun with this, but most other people will be bored.

RATING: 3

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