Reno 911!: Miami Film Review by Kam Williams

Led by Lieutenant Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon), a detail of eight officers have been designated to represent the City of Reno at a national police convention in Miami Beach, Florida. This is no ordinary contingent of cops, but rather a motley crew of weirdos, starting with the light in his gumshoes Dangle, who has highlights in his hair and always wears shorts in order "to be able to run like a cheetah."

Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash) is a big-bunned Amazon in heat who has her eyes on Deputy S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough), the only other African-American in the squad. He has to deal with the sister’s sassy attitude because he’s more interested in a white colleague, Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendy McLendon-Covey) an ex-showgirl with an hourglass figure.

Then there’s Deputy Cherisha Kimball (Mary Birdsong) a lipstick lesbian who’s not quite out of the closet, flaky Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenny) who’s infatuated with her boss even though he might not be interested in girls, and Deputy Travis Junior (Ben Garant), a reckless redneck. Rounding out the team is Deputy James Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui), a misanthropic, second-generation Mexican-American.

When our odd octet arrives in Miami and attempts to register at the convention center, they are refused entry because the hotel has no record of their reservations. So, they have to settle for a cheap motel on the seedy side of town which just happens to be hosting a weekend for swingers called "Suckfest." After a night in which they generally over-imbibe and partake in some of the sordid debauchery, they saunter back over to the convention only to find it sealed shut due to a biological attack.

Since every other law enforcement officer around is now quarantined inside where they are certain to die unless an antidote is administered in less than 24 hours, it falls to the renegades from Reno to crack the case and track down the terrorists responsible while simultaneously maintaining order in the suddenly-defenseless city. This implausible premise provides the basis for the bizarre shenanigans found in Reno 911!: Miami, a big screen adaptation of the Comedy Central sitcom which is, itself, a spoof of the Fox’s reality-TV show Cops.

This gross-out flick features only the rudiments of a plot, relying instead on the shock value provided by the punch lines, pratfalls and sight gags in a sloppily-edited series of disjointed skits which unfold at locales like a topless beach or the home of a hip-hop mogul. The movie is mostly a mix sexually-themed humor, with subjects ranging from masturbation to homosexuality to rape to mammary glands to private parts.

2007 must be the year of the overexposed ghetto booty in cinema, since this is already the third film of the year to mine considerable mirth at the expense of a flatulent sister with a ginormous, prosthetic, cellulite-ridden rump. Only fans of the TV show are likely to find most of these antics amusing, because the ensemble isn’t fully fleshed-out, as if the audience is expected to arrive in the theater very familiar with the individual characters’ personality traits.

The supporting cast includes Danny DeVito, The Rock and Paul "Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, but only in blink-and-you-missed-it cameos. Overall, Reno 911!: Miami is apt to work to the extent you can stomach a profusion of profane language, a parade of scantily-clad airheads, animal abuse, misogyny, and the N-word, in an utterly inane whodunit more in search of a cheap joke than the perpetrators of any crime.

A relentlessly crude and coarse sitcom with too much downtime between laughs to make it worth the wait.

• Fair (1.5 stars)
• Rated R for nudity, profanity, graphic sexuality, ethnic slurs, drug use, crude humor, and slapstick violence.
• Running time: 84 minutes
• Studio: 20^th Century Fox