Sony Pictures
America: you demanded a sequel to Paul Blart: Mall Cop, and now you’re getting it. We’re all getting it. It’s been gotten.
Wait, you might be thinking, I did not personally demand this sequel! Not I! Too bad, because your brethren did – they had to, really, voting with their movie ticket-buying dollars, enough to make the first film a bonafide hit, pulling in over $183m in worldwide box office returns. The feature even tops BoxOfficeMojo’s list of “bumbling” comedies (also, points to you, BoxOfficeMojo). Someone saw this movie. Was it you? It doesn’t matter, because the damage has been done: we’re getting Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and now there’s a trailer to prove it.
Feast your eyes on it, America, you know you want to:
Bumbling? Bumbling? The man got hit by a car! Paul Blart, are you okay? Oh, yes. Yes, you are.
In a stunning marriage of American excess, this sequel takes place in America’s most glitzy, gross play land: Las Vegas (and before you freak out on me about how Las Vegas is not gross and not even that glitzy anymore, can it, the Erbland family has lived in Las Vegas for over twenty years now, it’s where I take my Christmas, okay? so I feel content in being able to judge my own mostly-hometown). It’s actually not an entirely insane idea. Why not get more Paul Blart out of the mall? Even mall cops need to mix it up.
But is Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: Vegas Vacation going to end up being the massive comedic hit we all deserve? Probably.
As far as Kevin James vehicles go (vehicles? get it? Segway?), Paul Blart: Mall Cop is the comedian’s single biggest hit. Both Hitch and Grown Ups made more at the box office, but both of those features relied on other cast members to pull in the giggling masses (Hitch is obviously more of a Will Smith outing, and Grown Ups is an ensemble piece). Paul Blart: Mall Cop is James’ opus. It even made more than his other big solo outing, Zookeeper, and it spanked both The Dilemma and Here Comes the Boom. It even made more money (domestically) than I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and that movie included Adam Sandler and lots of horrible digs about gay marriage!
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: Bright Lights, Big City also has something else going for it: the burgeoning Segway market. Kidding! It’s a release date, a comedy friendly one at that.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: The Hangover will arrive in theaters on April 17 of next year. And it’s not as if it is simply the only comedy opening that week – but it is, going up against the drama Child 44, the doc Monkey Kingdom, the actioner Run All Night, and the horror film Unfriended (which used to be titled Cybernatural) — but it’s actually the only straight (er, bumbling?) comedy to hit wide release in the entire month of April. Its closest competition is the March 27 release of the Will Ferrell- and Kevin Hart-starring Get Hard. This is some canny dating, people. Another comedy doesn’t even pop up on the schedule until May 8, when Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara hit the big screen in their untitled laugher.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 will, without question, be the biggest comedic of April, just because of where it falls on the schedule. It didn’t even need to have a high-earning first film to get it there.
You can already see the commercials, can’t you? “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: SegYou, SegMe is April’s most beloved comedy”! Simply because it has to be. You don’t even need to see the film to make it so.
