The Tuxedo

The Tuxedo – When his new boss is badly injured, hapless driver, Jimmy Tong, finds himself trying to fill the shoes of a suave, smooth and confident spy and, when he finds a special, technology-laden Tuxedo, he has to literally fill his clothes too! With the Tuxedo giving him a new set of skills to help him on his way, Jimmy and new partner, Del, must stop terrorist, Dietrich Banning, from poisoning the world’s water supply.

The Tuxedo (2002) – Director: Kevin Donovan

Rating: 12

Running Length: 98 mins

Starring: Jackie Chan, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ritchie Coster

Genre: Comedy, Martial Arts

REVIEW: ‘THE TUXEDO’

Jackie Chan is by no means a stranger to the more comedic side of the martial arts genre and has become a household name for kids’ action movies. ‘The Tuxedo’ pushes the boundaries into the teen demographic but the in-your-face vulgar approach that the script seems to think teens want means that the quality is less than audiences have come to expect from Chan. While his trademark slapstick-style kung fu moves are always fun to watch, the movie’s preoccupation with misogyny, appealing to the stereotype desires of the teen boy, drags it down to the bottom of the barrel.

‘The Tuxedo’ attempts to offset it’s blatant puerile attitude by ham-fistedly giving Chan’s female counterpart, Del (Love Hewitt), some ‘strong independent woman’ snapshots. However, she is a bizarre and off-putting mixture of silly girl and unpleasantly aggressive woman and the best that the movie can attempt to give her a fleshed out character is flashing her cleavage to bypass male bouncers, hardly winning any awards for feminism. The plot itself is perfectly fine for this type of movie (no-one’s expecting high-brow story telling) but it drags on too long to keep the audience caring. It’s a shame that Jason Isaacs was so underused, his nice-guy spy could have added more to Chan’s clueless ‘nobody’ but his brief introduction almost makes his character pointless apart from the obvious plot device of bringing the tuxedo into to the narrative.

Overall ‘The Tuxedo’ had the potential to be a good movie but was squandered by the director, Donovan’s desire to make a movie for stereotypical teens and in doing so alienates anyone who doesn’t fit this limited demographic. Fortunately Chan’s back catalogue is large enough for ‘The Tuxedo’ to be more-or-less forgotten.

CONTENT: IS ‘THE TUXEDO’ SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN?

A man working in a water-bottling factory walks away from the production line to make a phone call. When hidden from the sight of others, a man appears behind him and puts a plastic bag over his head and fills it with water. The victim struggles for breath for a few seconds and then dies.

Two people are talking but their dialogue can’t be heard, two other people are watching and jokingly pretend to talk as if they are the couple. One of them says ‘Let’s go back to your place and mate like donkeys’. When these two characters go back to speaking to each other normally, one tells the other that he has a crush on a woman, when telling his friend what he wants to say to her, he says ‘When I see you, I have a wet dream’, but it is clear that he doesn’t understand what this means.

Two characters are in a car which explodes, both initially appear to be ok however after a few seconds, blood pours from the head of one of them and they collapse to the floor. The other character rushes to their side and holds them as they gradually become weaker; this character is taken to hospital and the emotional distress is minimal.

When the movie’s villain, Dietrich Banning, is first introduced, he gives an incidental character a glass of water. This character begins to cough and says that he is thirsty then finds out that he has been poisoned. The man is told that his ‘internal organs are shrivelling’ and his skin turns ashen and wrinkled. He collapses and there is a close up of his eye which loses its definition, turning grey and his pupil completely disappears. The man continues to choke for a few seconds until he dies and a portion of his body turns to dust. Banning then breaks off one of the man’s hands, splits it in half and gives one each to two guards who are standing nearby. Much of this is graphically shown on-screen, often in close up and could be quite disturbing for some kids.

A female agent speaks to a new partner and discusses code words, not realising that two men have changed them as a prank. She tells her partner that when he first meets her, he should say ‘Nice rack’ to which she will reply ‘I forgot my bra’.

A character falls from a height but is saved by special gloves which enable him to ‘stick’ to the wall and climb up it. Although nothing bad happens, we mention this in case it proves imitable for some kids.

Two women practice at a shooting range while two men watch them from behind. Each is control of a camera and both zoom-in to the women’s behinds; both women are wearing tight-fitting trousers.

A woman who is wearing a low cut dress needs to enter a venue and leans over, essentially flashing her breasts at the security men at the door. Both stare at her chest and one has a big smile on his face.

Jimmy innocently asks a woman to take her clothes off as she is wearing something he needs. She takes this as seduction and allows the top of her dress to fall down which exposes her lacy bra. She them proceeds to remove several of Jimmy’s clothes as he fights against her, telling her she’s got the wrong idea. This scene is played for jokes but her unwillingness to take no for an answer could give the wrong message to children.

A woman who is wearing a dress begins to climb a ladder before a man, she tells him not to look up her skirt even though he’s made no attempt to objectify or leer at her before this.

The villain’s plan involves insect larvae and there is a close-up of a large needle injecting one of the larvae which squirms (possibly in pain).

A woman implies that a man hasn’t ‘mature(d) sexually’ by pulling at the front of his trousers and looking down them and as there is a large gap, she looks disapprovingly at him.

A man accidentally swallows an insect and then thousands of others fly into his mouth, he convulses and his face begins to dry out until an object which had been in his mouth sinks into his face due to his body turning to dust.

CAN I SEE A CLIP?

VERDICT: IS ‘THE TUXEDO’ FOR KIDS?

While some teenagers may enjoy the silly and often bawdy comedy that ‘The Tuxedo’ brings to the table, it is unlikely a movie that many parents would want their kids to watch with how comfortable it is with old-fashioned sexism. Because of this, we do not recommend ‘The Tuxedo’ for under 12’s.

• Violence: 3/5 (the poisoning scene mentioned above is graphic and the villain’s cruelty during such a brutal killing could be especially disturbing for kids)
• Emotional Distress: 0/5
• Fear Factor: 2/5
• Sexual Content: 4/5
• Bad Language: 2/5 (mild to moderate cursing and blasphemy throughout but not too frequent)
• Dialogue: 2/5 (mostly sexist dialogue)
• Other Notes: Deals with themes of espionage, being thrown in the deep end, women in positions of power, wanting to rule the world, taking on someone else’s identity and believing in yourself.

Words by Laura Record

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