Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (2015)

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 arrives in 2015 as a sequel to a film that had no business spawning one, and it carries its obligations lightly. Kevin James returns as the hypoglycemic security guard, now widowed, divorced, and dispatched to a Las Vegas security convention where art thieves lurk behind replica canvases. The Wynn resort serves as an uncredited co-star, its marble corridors photographed with the reverence usually reserved for cathedrals. The picture grossed $107 million against a 6 percent approval rating, a pairing that says more about the republic than any election cycle.

The casting is diverse in the incidental manner of a studio comedy assembled from a call sheet. Daniella Alonso, Eduardo Verástegui, and Nicholas Turturro appear in supporting roles, and the film never pauses to congratulate itself for their presence. That absence of self-congratulation is its own small mercy. The women fare marginally better on paper: Divina runs hotel security, and Maya nurses ambitions of UCLA. The screenplay then hands both of them to a plot built on fat jokes and a daughter who must be rescued, which undercuts the gesture almost entirely.

What the film does not do is lecture. There is no climate sermon, no dismantling of the class structure, no earnest plea on behalf of the marginalized. The villains are art thieves who want money, and the film treats wealth as scenery, not sin. Race, sexuality, and history go unmentioned, not from cowardice but from a complete lack of interest. This is lowbrow slapstick with a Segway and a fainting spell, asking nothing of the audience beyond ninety-four minutes of attention. There is something almost restful in a film so thoroughly unburdened by purpose. The sommelier notes the absence of any finish at all, and marks it down accordingly.