Code Name: The Cleaner (2007)

We've seen this premise before in countless comedies in the past, an ordinary man with amnesia who finds himself ducking bullets and has to figure out what's going on. It's possible that it could have successfully been done again, but this particular effort doesn't make the grade. I'll start with the actors. Cedric The Entertainer does seem to be trying at times, and sometimes he comes across as a likable goof, but more often he comes across as loud-mouthed and abrasive. Lucy Liu has a thankless role as the woman who helps him, and Mark Dacascos is totally wasted as the villain, even though he does get to show off some martial arts (which are badly choreographed and directed.) But the main problem with the movie is the script and direction. The movie contains some blatant product plugs, several instances where the action comes to a halt to show off some "hilarious" comedy (such as the Dutch dance sequence), and an ending that does not know when to quit. And the outtakes shown at the end are even less funny than the scripted gags that preceded them!

Watching this movie, I kept thinking they couldn't afford to have a real script written, and must have run out of money when they were about 2/3 of the way through, and couldn't finish editing it. Not to mention, they probably couldn't afford Martin Lawrence for the lead role, so they filled it with Cedric the Entertainer, who does better in supporting roles. Cedric does have several funny scenes, though.The plot is completely unintelligible, and undeveloped, but based on the genre you can predict most of the action. It's the ever-popular "hero has something secret the bad guys want, so they can sell it to terrorists for a fortune, but it's missing." Not to mention, the scenes or "shticks" that have been better done elsewhere. For example, every time Cedric tried to be funny with judo moves, I kept thinking that he ripped that off from Martin, who does it much better. There is a brief cat-fight scene that is far inferior to the one in Undercover Brother (which is an excellent movie, and much funnier overall).

Ever since Cedric the Entertainer burst onto the scene with his critically acclaimed, scene-stealing performance in the original "Barbershop," no filmmaker has quite figured out how best to harness the considerable talents of this longtime standup comic. In the years since that film was released, C the E has appeared in one monumental turkey after another, with his latest endeavor, "Code Name: The Cleaner," marking what we can only hope will be a professional low point before he begins his gradual ascent back towards some degree of cinematic respectability.In what is clearly one of the lamest, dopiest and most ill-conceived spy comedies in movie history, Cedric plays an amnesia victim who wakes up in a hotel room next to a dead FBI agent and a suitcase stuffed with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Unsure of who he is - the possibilities range all the way from an undercover spy to a local janitor - or how he managed to get himself into such a predicament, the mystery man, Jake, is soon on the run from unknown forces out to nab him and the valuable computer chip it is believed he has in his possession.This is such a perfectly ridiculous piece of celluloid-wasting cinema that it is scarcely worth the time it takes to watch, let alone comment on, the movie. Suffice it to say that Cedric needs to start looking into getting himself a better agent, while his co-stars - like Lucy Liu, whose career is clearly in as much trouble as Cedric's - should begin deleting this film from their professional resumes as quickly as is humanly possible.

Friday night my wife and I went to see Code Name: The Cleaner, staring Cedric Kyles (AKA Cedric the Entertainer) and Lucy Liu. It's about Jake, a man who wakes up in a hotel room, next to a dead body, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. As events unfold around him, he starts to recollect that he is a secret agent, and puts together that he was working undercover as a janitor on a deadly mission.This was another fun movie. It had a PG-13 rating but I would say that it was a fairly mild PG-13 (a few shootouts and Nicollette Sheridan in her undies), so I wouldn't worry too much about taking a 13 year old to see it. It's the first movie I've seen with Cedric in the lead role and only the second with him in it at all (Serving Sara was the first). I really liked him. He was absolutely hilarious without going over the top. Of course Lucy Liu is always a sight to behold.The rating it has received on IMDb was a dismal 3.0 but that was because a significant number (52%) of the votes were a 1. I suspect that the movie or one of it's actors really perturbed some group, so they retaliated with a vote drive. There is no way this movie rated a 1. I personally gave it a 7 and my wife tells me we will own this.Incidentally, stick around for the first half of the credits. The show some very good outtakes.