After stinking up the multiplex with Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 last month, is Kevin James finally searching for critical redemption? Nah, don’t think so. The actor has signed on to star in comedy The True Memoirs of an International Assassin, with Blart producer Todd Garner returning in the same capacity and Jeff Sussman (Zookeeper) exec-producing.
The pic, to be directed by Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2, the upcoming Masters of the Universe) from a Black List script by Jeff Morris, will center on a bumbling, mild-mannered accountant who tries his hand at novel-writing, only for his book about an international assassin to top the charts – as a non-fiction memoir. Bombarded by publicity and unsure of how to deal with a world that now believes him to be a stone-cold killer, he vacations in Belize. Predictably, he ends up snared in an actual assassination plot in the Central American country and must rely on the mindset of his character Colt Rodgers to get out alive.
With any actor other than James, there may have been potential here, but given his long string of movies entirely powered by the actor being clumsy, vacuous and essentially a sentient fat joke, it doesn’t take a genius to see where True Memoirs is going. You can practically hear the sniggers in Garner’s statement: “This is going to be a fun, action-packed ride and will definitely show a side to Kevin that nobody has ever seen.”
PalmStar Media CEO Kevin Frakes, also a producer, added, “We can’t wait to drop Kevin in these crazy and intense situations and let the world see the bad-ass he truly is.” That sentence is probably the best example I’ve ever heard of a situation that demands the adage, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ James has simply done too many awful comedies – also including Zookeeper, Grown Ups, Here Comes the Boom and Grown Ups 2 – for us to get fooled again.
Reluctantly, we’ll bring you more on The True Memoirs of an International Assassin when we have it.
