Jury Duty (1995) TriStar/Comedy RT: 88 minutes Rated PG-13 (crude sex-related humor) Director: John Fortenberry Screenplay: Neil Tolkin, Barbara Williams and Samantha Adams Music: David Kitay Cinematography: Avi Karpick Release date: April 14, 1995 (US) Cast: Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci, Brian Doyle-Murray, Abe Vigoda, Charles Napier, Shelley Winters, Richard Edson, Richard Riehle, Alex Datcher, Richard T. Jones, Ernie Lee Banks, Billie Bird, Jorge Luis Abreu, Siobhan Fallon, Sharon Barr, Gregory Cooke, Jack McGee, Nick Bakay, Dick Vitale, Sean Whalen, Andrew Dice Clay (uncredited). Box Office: $17M (US)
Rating: *
I’ve heard it said that Pauly Shore is an acquired taste. Whoever said it must have been a publicity rep plugging whatever POS comedy he was starring in at the time. If memory serves, it was Jury Duty, a thoroughly moronic courtroom comedy that should have been called 11 Angry Men (and Women) and an Idiot. It doesn’t seem right mentioning the two movies in the same sentence, but the brief clip of 12 Angry Men shown in Jury Duty is the only whiff of intelligence to be found in this salute to stupidity. It serves as a reminder that there is indeed intelligent life beyond the universe of Pauly Shore.
Before I get into the plot, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the big name stars that appear in Jury Duty– Shelley Winters, Abe Vigoda and Charles Napier. Winters plays Shore’s mom, Napier is the mom’s boyfriend and Vigoda’s the judge. WHAT IN THE HELL ARE THEY DOING HERE?! Winters is a two-time Oscar winner. Vigoda co-starred in The Godfather. Napier has done better- e.g. The Blues Brothers, Rambo: First Blood Part II. What possessed them to even take a meeting with the producers? They had to know this would be a complete embarrassment. It has to be bad if Andrew Dice Clay asks to go uncredited.
Shore stars as Tommy Collins, a lame-brained layabout who can’t even cut it as a male stripper. In the first of many, MANY painful scenes, Shore performs a routine dressed as a milkman during which he douses himself with moo juice much to the disgust of everybody in the strip club (and theater). He lives in a trailer with his coddling mother and her boneheaded beau who wants Tommy to go into the Styrofoam recycling business with him. When he learns they plan to take the trailer with them on their trip to Las Vegas, he decides to answer the jury duty notice he previously threw away. It pays $5 a day plus free accommodations should the jury be sequestered. What does he have to lose? No, really, I’m asking. Tommy (and by proxy, Pauly) lost his dignity a long time ago. What does he have to lose?
Any first-year law student- hell, any middle school student- can tell you that any one of Tommy’s antics in Jury Duty would not only have him thrown off the jury, but likely result in criminal charges as well. This movie exists in a world where legal procedures don’t exist. Either that or they’ve been rewritten by lawyers who specialize in appeals. OR, the makers of Jury Duty don’t understand the first thing about our country’s legal system. Everybody knows that potential jurors don’t get to select their trials like they’re test-driving new cars. They’re told what jury they’ll be serving on. Yet Shore’s character jury-hops like a teenager in a multiplex until he finds a trial he likes, that of alleged “Drive-Thru Killer” Carl Wayne Bishop (Whalen, The People Under the Stairs).
For whatever reason (it doesn’t matter), Tommy is elected jury foreman. In a bid to extend his stay at the hotel, he does everything he can to stall, prolong and delay deliberations. He votes not guilty when everybody else votes guilty. He insists on reviewing and re-reviewing evidence. He sets up pointless reenactments. He drags it out for more than 30 days. Everybody gets pissed off at him. They try to kill him at one point. AGAIN, any one of Tommy’s actions in the jury room could get him kicked off the jury. Is there not one among the 11 smart enough to report this yo-yo to the judge? Apparently not. But why am I even trying to apply logic to a Pauly Shore movie? Can I plead temporary insanity?
Okay, I’ll cop to liking Encino Man and Son in Law. Granted, it’s not the stuff of Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, but they work in their own individual ways. I don’t mind Shore in those movies. I do mind him A LOT in Jury Duty. By the time this one slinked (or is it slunk?) into theaters, his act was old and annoying. I have no problem with low-IQ protagonists. I laughed like hell at Dumb and Dumber, Billy Madison and Tommy Boy. All of these dumb-dumb comedies played to their lead actors’ strengths. Shore has no strength other than being completely annoying. He brings this “quality” to every character he plays. Alas, it’s not the only reason Tommy is so unlikable. There’s also his sense of Gen-X entitlement to consider. Some people’s asses need kicking, he’s one of them. The only thing he has going in his favor is his pet chihuahua Peanut and even then you keep wondering why the dog doesn’t pull a reverse Lassie Come Home.
As if Jury Duty wasn’t already unbelievable, it goes the extra mile in giving Tommy a love interest in fellow juror Monica (Carrere, Wayne’s World). She, of course, hates him at first, starts to like him, hates him again when she finds out what he’s been doing and… oh, you know the rest of this song. Why she’d even give him the time of day much less develop feelings for him makes me question her sense and sensibility. THEN the movie asks us to believe that Tommy was right about Bishop being not guilty. On top of that, Tommy solves the case while sifting through a pile of garbage. I’m sure there’s a joke to be made about the script here, but I got nothing.
Although I half-heartedly chuckled a few times during Jury Duty, please don’t mistake that for me liking the movie in any way. It gets its one star solely because of the Jeopardy-loving dog. It’s directed by John Fortenberry who made the equally woeful A Night at the Roxbury. It is unfunny to a weird extreme. It’s painful to watch talented actors embarrass themselves in a movie clearly intended for the moron demographic. Sometimes such movies can be entertaining; this is NOT one of them. My advice is to NOT answer the summons for Jury Duty.
