Hannah Montana: The Movie featured more pathos and conflict. The stars aligned perfectly, and Paul Blart: Mall Cop was the year’s first blockbuster.īut the success of Mall Cop overshadows the fact that it is one of the most thoroughly inoffensive movies to be rolled out by a studio thus far in 2009. Mall Cop had the cosign of Adam Sandler, whose Happy Madison production company bankrolled the film, perhaps to make it up to James for starring in the even worse I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. It also boasted a semi-star in Kevin James, America’s de facto portly comedian of choice. It had the benefit of coming out in the vacuous hole of a movie month that is January, and was promoted on TV at a frequency rivaled only by Barack Obama coverage during that time. Superficially, it’s not hard to see how Mall Cop made as much as it did.

That’s $40 million more than the take for Slumdog Millionaire, which won Best Picture at the Oscars, and was out in limited release for three months longer than Mall Cop. As if we needed more proof that critical appraisal has little bearing on box office receipts, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, a movie that got rightfully slagged upon release by every self-respecting film critic, has made almost $180 million worldwide.

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