"SHOWTIME" TEAMS MURPHY, DENIRO IN ACTION BUDDY COMEDY COMBO

• Showtime Cast:
• Eddie Murphy as Trey Ellis
• Robert DeNiro -- Mitch Preston
• George Faison -- Precinct Captain
• Rene Russo -- Chase the producer
• Atty. Johnny Cochran as himself
• William Shatner as 'TJ Hooker'

The plotline is based on the Cops-like reality TV shows where they follow and/or hang miniature cameras on the police as they run down perpetrators and engage in high-speed car chases in a symbiotic (some would say parasitic) relationship between police and TV producers. "Showtime" takes this to another level as a TV show is built around an action-oriented "Dirty Harry" type cop in trouble with his precinct, and a patrolman who is also an aspiring actor.

As part of repairing police community relations and as a way to punish DeNiro's Det. Mitch Preston, he's paired with Murphy's patrolman Trey Ellis as the two are thrown together as partners on the evolving show. Rene Russo is the producer Chase who drips of Hollywood Southern California Cocktail-Speak, and who thinks nothing of redecorating the main room of the precinct house to make it more TV Friendly.

Chase says we'll give him a minority comedic type. Yeah, to pull in the Urban Audience she and her boss plot, which is code language for Black and Latinos. (What, you didn't get the email making the Internet rounds about PR firms that say Non Urban Dictate radio ad buys for avoiding Black audiences?).

This is another instance where humour is used to make a cutting societal truth. Showtime pairs a younger Black man and an older White one; one is hip and media savvy, the other a by-the-book, just do your job kinda guy. This hot-and-cold, tomato-tomahto casting will be seen in a few more weeks in Chris Rock and Anthony Hopkins' globetrotting spy flick Bad Company.

There is a street shoot-out during a heist that had some of the intensity from H.E.A.T. where DeNiro co-starred as a master criminal pursued by Al Pacino's LAPD detective.

Showtime in fact has a great amount of action with shoot-outs and explosions that wasn't expected from the stated funny subject matter. The preview audience earlier in the week of the film's release were pleasantly taken aback by this added ingredient. Another one is the film's Out There attitude, such as the inclusion of Atty. Johnny Cochran spoofing himself, and William Shatner as "Showtime's" Technical Consultant from his years as TVs "T.J. Hooker."

The makers of the film didn't pass up too many opportunities to start up a chase scene or blow something up. They used the "Lethal Weapon 3" subplot of a super weapon on the streets of Los Angeles that can shoot through police bulletproof vests and even cars. Incidentally, that film featured Russo as Mel Gibson's karate cop counterpart as the third lethal weapon after Danny Glover.

Russo herself some did comedy in "Get Shorty," although the former model is more used to the type of glam roles she played in the remake of "The Thomas Crown Affair" with James Bond 007's Pierce Brosnan. Showing that Six Degrees of Separation is a reality, Russo and a fellow "Tin Cup" actress even share a scene in Preston's favourite greasy spoon restaurant.

The pairing of the two male stars might seem to make them a bit of an odd couple, but people forget that DeNiro, played a much harder media darling detective with "Saving Private Ryan's" Edward Burns in last year's bloody "15 Minutes" -- which lasted about that long in theatres. He showed his comic talents early on in "Midnight Run" with Charles Grodin, about a bounty hunter returning a mob accountant to Los Angeles.

That combination of the Road and Buddy flick genres made a ton of cash, and showed there were more sides to DeNiro as he foiled the authorities, the mob and the FBI in Yaphet Kotto, whom he chided as "Agent Foster Grant" for the eye shades that seemed a part of the uptight agents' uniform.

Audiences were again reminded when DeNiro and Billy Crystal made the hilarious "Analyze This," about a Soprano-like situation where a top Mobster started seeing a psychiatrist when he began suffering anxiety attacks after a failed hit on his life. Of course, the latest DeNiro comedic outing was in "Meet The Parents" as the ex-CIA operative whose daughter Ben Stiller is romancing and the suspicious father makes his weekend visit a living hell. I don't know if the cop role DeNiro played in "Mad Dog & Glory" where he was given a mobster's woman for a month would count.

Here in "Showtime" we're lookin' at DeNiro as he plays it straight -- mostly-- while Murphy gets the funny lines. But just as with Leslie Nielsen, who said some comedians say funny things and other say things funny, he just talks naturally and people think he's funny; DeNiro has a just below the surface tension that seems to almost break through the restraint so when he does things we laugh anyway. "I should report you to Internal Affairs for impersonating an officer," Preston tells Trey. "Work on your 'Starsky & Hutch' routine on your own time."

Having Eddie Murphy there (who has played more cop roles than DeNiro, counting the fake ones he did in the two "48 Hrs") to play off helps a lot, with Trey's antics to stay in front of the camera. But Murphy played a strong dramatic role in the maligned and under appreciated "Metro" (with Michael Rappaport of "True Romance", "Copland' and the racist Skinhead in John Singleton's "Higher Learning"). There as the city's ace boon coon hostage negotiator he has a problem with alcohol and trouble in his home as he's neglecting his girlfriend who is fast running out of patience. Unlike the "Beverly Hills Cop" movies, of which I'm still waiting for Number 4, in "Metro" Murphy's cop had a home life, and personal relations outside the badge. It's still one of Murphy's best roles. I didn't say it was one of his best films.

One potential audience member of "Showtime" remarked after hearing of the plotline "it seems too much like "Bowfinger" to me." I thought so too, at first. That farcical movie was about a conceited actor scammed by a fly-by-night producer into making a science fiction picture without his permission -- but starring himself! It even featured Murphy in two roles, as both the action star and a stand-in as they shot the movie by running up to him, reciting their lines to the confused star, then running off again as he stood there open-mouthed and thinking he was going crazy.

"Bowfinger" was misnamed a "Steve Martin picture," as if audiences were flocking to the theatres to see him. This was like the similarly misnamed so-called Steven Seagal film "Exit Wounds" with "Spawn's" Michael Jai White and comic relief Tom Arnold; but it was co-star DMX following a small part in "Romeo Must Die" who really made that film click. But They Don't Know Who He Be.

The audience members who want DeNiro in "Showtime" will get him, and the ones who want Eddie will get him, too. The film divides the time between them pretty evenly, although DeNiro's Preston character gets more development as we see his home environs and such.

The Blooper reel with the end credits show more of the pair's comicry, especially in front of the "Confessional Cam" the two cops were contractually obligated to spend time in front of, and where both actors' improvisational abilities came to the fore, such as DeNiro's reciting all the famous cop lines from movies he can think of.

The film is better than I was originally going to give it credit for; they didn't cut as much of the grittiness as I'd thought, and the dialog has the crispness and earthiness that you'd expect from a DeNiro movie with he playing a cop. "Showtime" is ready for primetime, and the film was enjoyable with more meat on it than I thought. It’s nice to be wrong. Once in a while.

"SHOWTIME" is rated PG-13 for salty, earthy, cop type language, violence, explosions, chase scenes and much gunplay