Two LAPD cops, Detective Mitch Preston and Officer Trey Sellars, both from the Central Division, are paired for a television police reality show and run into trouble with a crime lord. Mitch shoots a news camera after a failed confrontation with local drug dealer Lazy Boy, who escapes by using a custom-built armor-piercing gun. Maxxis Television, the network that employed the cameraman, decides to sue the police department for $10 million, but will drop the lawsuit if Mitch agrees to star in the police reality show, which Trey soon calls Showtime!.
Trey is an LAPD officer who struggles with the department's investigator examination and an aspiring actor. He pays a friend to snatch the purse of the show's producer, Chase Renzi, then retrieves it after a staged fight scene. Although the deception is embarrassingly revealed, Chase is impressed and signs Trey anyway. It is quickly revealed that the show's producers have little interest in filming an actual police officer's existence; they build a mini-movie set in the middle of the station, and replace Mitch's nondescript personal car with a Humvee while Trey drives a C5 Corvette. They also hire William Shatner (who once played T. J. Hooker) to give both men tips on how to act. But while Trey is eager to learn, Mitch is merely annoyed.
Despite all of this, Mitch tries to investigate the mysterious supergun, which is subsequently used by arms dealer Caesar Vargas to kill the drug dealer and his girlfriend. Through a clever ruse by Trey, they can get the arms dealer's name from Re-Run, the dead dealer's henchman. However, Vargas is less than cooperative, which causes a brawl at his nightclub. Trey and Mitch defeat him and his henchmen, and they have a relatively friendly conversation on their way home. However, Mitch's good humor evaporates when he finds that, in his absence, the Showtime! producers have drastically remodeled his house and have given him a retired K-9 dog as a pet.
Vargas and his squad assault an armored car and kill the crew, and devastate the police who respond. Trey and Mitch arrive and are pulled into the shootout. When the attackers flee in a garbage truck, Mitch gives chase in a police car. In the ensuing mayhem, the car is rammed by the garbage truck, which crashes into a construction site. Mitch survives by jumping from the police car to Trey's sports car (he had previously denounced "hood-jumping" as a useless skill). In the wake of the disaster, the police chief pulls the plug on the show, suspends Mitch from duty, and demotes Trey back to patrol.
With the show ended, Mitch's car is returned and his apartment restored (but he refuses to return the dog, of which he has grown fond). While watching the final episode, Mitch phones Trey and apologizes for his actions, offering to help him study for the investigator exam. However, while doing so, Mitch sees one of his police colleagues at Vargas's nightclub. He and Trey investigate, finding that Vargas is selling the weapons at a gun show at the Bonaventure Hotel. Vargas flees with one of the weapons, taking Chase hostage in the process. The duo can rescue her via a pocket pistol concealed in a Maxxis camera, but the ceiling of the room is shot. It is located just below the pool, so it floods, and Vargas is washed out the window to his death, but Trey and Mitch manage to survive by handcuffing themselves together. They end up suspended from a broken beam outside the hotel.
Trey is promoted to detective, and he and Mitch are now partners and still working together on a new case. There are hints of a romance between Chase and Mitch. Showtime! is revived for a second season, this time with two attractive female officers who are just as antagonistic as Mitch and Trey.
Cast
Robert De Niro as Detective Mitch Preston, a pragmatic, camera-shy LAPD detective who is easily annoyed with the show's basis
Eddie Murphy as Officer Trey Sellars, an LAPD patrol man who failed the police detective examination repeatedly and would-be actor
In December 2000, it was reported that Robert De Niro and Eddie Murphy were in negotiations to star in Showtime!, a comedy described as being built around meta humor centered on buddy cop formulas similar to the approach Scream took to the slasher genre.[3] The original script was written by Keith Sharon with a rewrite by Miles Millar and Alfred Gough.[3] Later that month, Tom Dey was hired as director.[4]
From And Inspired By The Motion Picture Showtime, a soundtrack album composed of thirteen songs, was released on March 19, 2002, through MCA Records. Recording sessions took place at The Boxx and Main Street Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, at the Idea Lounge, The Ranch, Big Yard Studio and HC&F Studio in New York, at Iguana Recording Studios in Toronto, Ontario, at the Tracken Place and Brandon's Way Studio in Los Angeles. Production was handled by Dave Kelly, Babyface, Christopher Birch, Gordon Dukes, Kardinal Offishall, Richard Browne, Shaggy, Sting International, Tommie "Bishop" McLaughlin, Tony "CD" Kelly and Robert Livingston, the latter serving as executive producer with Joel Sill and Michael McQuarn. It features contributions from Shaggy, Alias Project, Babyface, Bounty Killer, Brian & Tony Gold, Gordon Dukes, Howzing, Jully Black, Kardinal Offishall, Latrelle, Marsha Morrison, Prince Mydas, Rayvon, Rik Rok, Rude, Sean Paul and T.O.K.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 25%, based on 122 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Showtime starts out as a promising satire of the buddy cop genre. Unfortunately, it ends up becoming the type of movies it is satirizing."[7] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.[8] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on a scale of A+ to F.[9]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times praised the filmmakers for adding "a fresh and funny satirical twist" to the buddy cop comedy formula for De Niro and Murphy to play with, saying it "displays an ingenuity, cleverness and briskness that never flags."[10]William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer gave praise to both lead actors, calling Murphy "funny and endearingly self-deprecating" as Trey and felt that De Niro's "low-key severity and hard-nosed eccentricity" carried the film along with its "comic bite."[11] Moira Macdonald of The Seattle Times praised Murphy's performance for being "very funny, in a larger-than-life sort of way," but critiqued that De Niro had nothing in the script to elevate his straight man character, felt that Russo and Shatner's roles were "truncated", and criticized the "watered down" satire as the film progresses, calling it an "uneven but frequently engaging comedy".[12]Roger Ebert wrote that the film starts out promising with De Niro and Murphy's interaction, but falters in the action-heavy second half.[13] Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine felt the film was a "cutesy satire for the masses, a smug Real World-meets-Cops smorgasbord suffocated by its air of pointlessness."[14]Variety's Todd McCarthy criticized the story for being a "shrill, strained and shallow riff on a tired idea" and the cast for slumming through their roles through "murky, muddy colors".[15] Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club wrote, "[T]epid as a media satire (of what exactly?), rote as an action-suspense film, Showtime is notable mainly for its breathtaking stupidity."[16]
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