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Dreams and aspirations often indicate what kind of profession a person intends to pursue. In Taxi, which is a remake, the audience gets to follow two people with very different aspirations, one a cab driver and the other a police officer. Belle (Queen Latifah) has worked hard over the last five years, as a bike borne delivery woman, to accomplish her goal to become a cab driver. The long and hard work has also affected Belle’s relationship with her boyfriend, as she has been preoccupied with fulfilling her dream. Her dream is to drive her own cab, a boosted Ford Crown Victoria on steroids in superior James Bond style.***

Police detective Washburn (Jimmy Fallon) finds himself being demoted and having his driver’s license suspended by his superior, Lieutenant Robbins (Jennifer Esposito), as a result of a car accident during a stake out. Without a drivers license Washburn is forced to use public transportation, but when he overhears a bank robbery in progress over his portable radio he takes a cab to the crime scene. This cab happens to be Belle’s improved Crown Victoria, and it is about to put her career and relationship on the line while Washburn keeps digging himself a deeper hole.***

Together Belle and Washburn begin a long uphill road in order to redeem themselves in regards to their professional careers and private lives. This journey takes them through eye-boggling car chases, death defiant stunts, and a couple of lessons in how to drive a car. These dangers are stitched together with slapstick humor and frequent situational jokes in regards to Washburn’s stupidity, insecurities, and inabilities. The humor and jokes are clichés from previous unoriginal films, which makes the jokes more mind numbing than humorous. The timing of the jokes seems to be missed, as if the audience knows the punch line before the joke is presented. This makes much of the humor silly, untimely, and overall less funny.***

Taxi presents some high-speed car chases in New York, but many of them seem to go on forever as if New York City had mile blocks. The bank robbers’ ability to hit targets the size of a quarter in 100 feet distances while moving with a handgun presents a new level of sharp shooter. These marksmen make Sergeant Riggs in Lethal Weapon look like a ten-year-old that still wets the bed. Therefore, these scenes create much awkwardness and it appears that the car chases and the other action scenes were intended to induce some form of suspense, but fail drastically in doing so.***

The combination of humor and action has been used efficiently before in films such as 48 Hrs. (1982), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Lethal Weapon (1987), and Die Hard (1988). In Naked Gun (1988) the viewers could see parody in action, as it made a mockery of the films made before that brought the audience action, suspense, and comedy through the law enforcement. Taxi attempts to deliver a film that walks on the ground in between the parodies and suspenseful actions, but never accomplishes to give suspense or comedy. And as far as the message of following ones dreams and aspirations, well, it is lost somewhere in the beginning. Overall Taxi offers a cinematic experience with very little true humor and suspense and would even make a nervous person fall asleep. Let us hope that Tim Story does a better job directing his upcoming Fantastic Four, as he did with Barbershop (2002).*** ---

The DVD is released in two different versions; one anamorphic widescreen presented in 2.35:1 while the second comes in pan and scan mode. The image is very clear with almost no visible artifacts, as there is minor edge enhancement. The colors are vibrantly vivid, which shows no smearing or saturation while the blacks remain real.***

The crisp and clean sound of the DVD is its best feature, as it presents a good soundtrack. The DD 5.1 delivers decent use of front and rear speakers when action sounds are brought to the speakers. However, the best use of the subwoofer is when the soundtrack is played and not during the car chases or other sudden sounds.*** ---

When the viewers are popping in the DVD they get to choose between the theatrical version and the extended version. The extended version is 15 minutes longer, which brings extra flesh to the story but does not elevate the cinematic experience. The deleted scenes bring more of the same to the film and some aspects are weaker in the performances, which might be the reason for why they were deleted.***

The extra features begins with The Meter’s Runnin’: Making Taxi, which provides much laughter by Jimmy Fallon and more detail on how they made the cab Belle drove in the film. There are also comments by Tim Story in regards to the process of making Taxi. Lights, Camera, and Blue Screen depict how they made some of the car chase scenes, which are explained by Ray McIntyre Jr. the visual effect supervisor. Jimmy Fallon has his own feature, Tour Guide: Jimmy Fallon, where he takes the audience on a tour of the set of Taxi while he accommodates the viewers with some of his personal humor. Beautiful Criminals offer the viewers only scenes in chronological order of the four female models that were a part of the film cast, which is set to background music.***

Those who have seen Reno on Comedy Central will recognize the two cops from the TV series who interview Jimmy Fallon and Queen Latifah while cruising through New York City. This portion, Reel Comedy: Taxi, is full of jokes and is actually funnier than the feature itself. Besides this funny interview there are two trailers of Sandlot 2 and American Dad. Lastly, there is an inside look on an upcoming film with Martin Lawrence called Rebound.*** ---