The problem with the "Reno 911!" movie is the same as the problem with the "Reno 911" TV show: They're out of ideas. Moving
it to a different city and putting it on the big screen doesn't cure that problem. If anything, it exacerbates it. When a joke fails now, it's failing on a grand scale, in a large theater full of non-laughing people. I had such affection for this show, Comedy Central's parody of "COPS," when it premiered in 2003. The mostly improvised dialogue was snarky, the characters delightfully daft, and the police work hilariously incompetent. I laughed heartily at every episode. Yet somewhere around the third season (the show's now taking a break in the middle of season 4), it became apparent that the inventiveness had worn off. More and more gags centered on Reno's bumbling cops encountering bizarre citizens, and those citizens' quirks started to seem more and more forced. Then there are the gags in which the cops inadvertently destroy something or blow something up. How many of those do we need?
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