Rhino -- Rocky's Movie Corner

Borrowing a movie idea from the French is like borrowing a costume idea from Prince Harry. Somebody is going to end up looking bad. In The Pacifier, a remake of the 1998 French comedy Le Binkee, that somebody is Vin Diesel. It would be hard to watch even a great actor deliver his lines with a child's pacifier in his mouth. To watch Diesel do it requires an inclination towards masochism.

In The Pacifier Diesel portrays a man who, like Jean Reno in the original, suffers a bonk to the head which causes him to behave like a toddler. Predictable gags follow: a two hundred pound man squeezing himself into a child's car seat, a streetwise buddy exclaiming "Dude, you got a crib...in your crib," Diesel making his favorite Teletubbie the gay one, etc. Predictable, but not funny. In fact, watching Diesel play the kid's game "Operation" you realize that somebody already removed this film's funny bone.

The few times where The Pacifier comes close to being humorous are purely accidental. Take the scene (please) where Diesel plays with Mr. Potato Head. After a few moments it will dawn on you that Diesel's noggin is nearly identical to the plastic tuber. You chuckle when you realize that if Vin stuck the plastic lips over his own they could film the trailer to Toy Story 3. But the moment passes and soon enough the harsh lameness of this movie drags you back into a melancholy stupor.

The Pacifier aims high, attempting to skewer the pressure that society heaps on grown-ups while championing a return to simpler values. Sure, who wouldn't want to trade in their laptop for an Etch-a-Sketch, if only for a day? The main problem with The Pacifier is that it wraps itself around the mistaken rubric "You can't go home again." That's wrong. You can always return home. What you can't do, at least without looking like a buffoon, is squeeze into your old Garanimals.

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Comments:

You make no sense. I doubt you've even seen Vin Diesel in The Pacifier, because if you had, you would have known that your synopsis of the entire movie is completely off. In the movie, he NEVER suffers from a head injury and acts like a toddler. He only babysits some kids, except that he's unqualified to do so being a military man who knows nothing about kids.

I don't know why you're even allowed to write for this website if you don't even watch the movies.