Review: PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2

PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2  (COMEDY)
0.5 out of 4 stars 
Directed by Andy Fickman
Starring: Kevin James, Neal McDonough, Raini Rodriguez, Daniella Alonso, David Henrie, Loni Love, D.B. Woodside, Eduardo Verastegui, Nicholas Turturro, Gary Valentine, Geovanni Gopradi, Vic Dibitetto, Ana Gasteyer
Rated PG for some violence.
94 minutes
Verdict: A soulless, witless, amateurish and bizarrely disinterested sequel that defies the dignity of the people involved and its audience.  It might have been understandable if it were made for public-access television programming.
YOU MAY ENJOY PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 IF YOU LIKED:
PAUL BLART: MALL COP  (2009)
HERE COMES THE BOOM  (2012)
GROWN UPS 2  (2013)
ZOOKEEPER  (2011)
I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY  (2007)

Nobody can reasonably expect great things from a movie called PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2.  Not even good things.  Optimistically, maybe "okay" things.  Consider that, because PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 is somehow all the way on the other side of the spectrum of expectations; it is even less competent than one might expect.  PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 isn't even up to the expectations that anyone ought to have from a movie bearing that title.
It isn't that it's particularly unbearable.  It certainly isn't the most loathsome product to come out of producer Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions, but even in the midst of that studio's consistently unpleasant output, PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 is as soulless as they come.  Six years after the original, there's no apparent enthusiasm in returning to the character, no story that writer/actor Kevin James and his collaborators seem interested in for the sake of continuing the story of the conceptually thin but physically rotund eponymous mall security officer.  Even if it's all for the paycheck, even at the cost of all dignity for those involved, it's bewildering how little anyone seems to care about the movie they're making.  This is a movie supposedly made on a budget of $30 million and opening 3,600 theaters nationwide, so why does it feel like a TV movie made for public-access television or an internet short stretched to feature length?
In that age-old device of cheap, obligatory sequels, PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 drops its characters in Las Vegas, Nevada, six years after New Jersey security guard Paul Blart (Kevin James) took down a gang at the mall where he worked.  His wife has divorced him, his mother has died, and his daughter Maya (Raini Rodriguez) his about to leave for college.  In Vegas for a security guards convention at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel (which the movie is primarily filmed in and is practically a commercial for), Blart has a series of embarrassing experiences and is ridiculed by his colleagues before getting another chance to prove himself when he discovers an art heist taking place in Wynn itself.
The movie has professional sound and lighting technicians, according to the end credits anyway, but you wouldn't know it by looking at it.  It looks and sounds like a home movie much of the time.  According to the credits there was a script, but it seems more like they just showed up at the hotel and winged it, and yet, it has the stale formality of the listed side effects at the end of a pharmaceutical drug ad.  There are a scarce few uncomfortable chuckles during the course of the film, and they all revolve around an overweight, self-serious man making pratfalls.  PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2 is a movie that thinks little of itself, and even less of the people whose money it aims to take.  It may be relatively harmless, a quickly forgotten bit of childish mugging in front of a camera for 90 minutes, but most people wouldn't shell out ten bucks to watch an amateur comedy sketch on YouTube.