Rush Hour 3

Have you ever had re-heated chinese food from a good, but not great restaurant? You know what I mean, it tastes okay but you only want one helping. Then you know the feeling of watching this movie.

Carter is now working as a traffic officer, and Lee is now the assistant to the ambassador of China. Ambassador of China gets shot at and almost dies. Carter and Lee must go to Paris to stop the people behind the attempted murder and they have all sorts of CRAZY adventures and fights involving women and tired out jokes.

Chris Tucker hasn't done a movie since the last Rush Hour, which was 6 years ago, and it seems as if there is good reason. Don't get me wrong, he does supply enough laughs in this movie to make it enjoyable, but he gets very annoying and the jokes have ALL been heard before. If not in the first 2, then in any other buddy cop movie. In fact, the funniest guy in the movie is Yvan Attel as George the taxi driver. I won't tell you what his deal is, because it is the one original bone this movie has in its body, but it is very funny and the saving grace of this movie. Roman Polanski, while playing out a very over done joke, is very funny if you know Polanski's history.

Chan is getting old and it shows in everyway. In parts, his acting has gotten much better and he has a better grasp on the english language, but he has many very cringe worthy lines. Except when he speaks Chinese, it is much more fluent and has much better emotion than when he is saying stuff like "I'm fly" or another comment I'm pretty sure was in either Rush Hour 1 or 2. The moments that his age shows the worst though is during the action scenes.

The action scenes were the weakest of the series and it is very sad. Chan just doesn't have it in him anymore. He has done all the great crazy stunts that we love him to see and he simply can't outdue himself anymore. That and he moves slower and his body doesn't move as much. When you see a Rush Hour movie you really want to see Chan kick ass, and while he did some cool things there really wasn't anything that exciting. Which could have been helped with Ratners direction.

Ratner is known in Hollywood as a copy cat. Somebody who, if he has seen someone do similar material before him, he can capture the look and feel, but on a much cheapened level. This has been proven since he has finished up 2 trilogies that had much better directors who did the first two (Red Dragon and X3). Truthfully, I didn't hate either of those movies like many did. In fact, I thought Red Dragon was better than Hannibal and that X3 was entertaining. So what happens he has to *gulp* copy himself. He just seems to shoot his actors from different angles and not cutting it down that much. He could have cut down some shots of Chan to make him look more swift, or done different angles with Chan. He could have made it so everytime Tucker said a line it didn't feel forced, but nope.

Don't get me wrong, this film is entertaining at moments, but so much of it feels as if I have seen it before. From them poorly redoing "Who's On First" to Tucker dancing and singing. Thank god I didn't have to sit through that clip of them singing in the Taxi cab that was in EVERY trailer. I would give this film a shot on the screen if you really liked the first 2, but if you won't see it in theaters, don't see it at all.