Run Fat, Boy, Run	by M. Faust

Watch the trailer for "Run Fat Boy, Run"

“I’m not fat, I’m unfit,” complains rent-a-cop Dennis (Simon Pegg) to a transvestite shoplifter making him run laps around a London shop district. Thus does he voice our first observation about Run, Fat Boy, Run, that it is not in fact a movie about chasing the corpulent. It takes a bit longer for our second expectation to run aground, that this is not a comedy in the vein of Pegg’s previous hits, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Pegg became a star in Britain on the television show Spaced, a sort of combination of Friends and The Simpsons that never caught on in the US because of its incessant references to England’s pop culture. Shaun and Fuzz were international hits despite that same tendency. Fat Boy shows that Pegg has learned from studying the careers of Rowan Atkinson and Rik Mayal (who he’s starting to resemble): If you want to become a star in America, you have to make American movies. Hence a script by Michael Ian Black, originally set in New York City but retooled by Pegg for London, though given a bland surface by director David Schwimmer. Dennis is a perennial loser whose biggest screw-up was leaving his pregnant girlfriend Libby (Thandie Newton) at the altar five years ago. She’s now dating Whit (Hank Azaria), who looks and dresses like—well, like someone named Whit, but who otherwise has everything that Dennis lacks, beginning with a large income and a willingness to compete. Determined to win Libby back, he decides to compete with Whit in a 26-mile marathon, even though he gets winded rolling out of bed. Did I mention that the race is in three weeks? Did I need to? Thought not. Fat Boy is thin on belly laughs (attention, mixed metaphor patrol), largely wasting the plentiful opportunities for slapstick presented by a compressed training regimen. But it negotiates the inevitable race triumph (did I give away anything there? I thought not) in a clever way. And if hardcore Pegg fans—the ones who actually got all the in-jokes in Shaun and Fuzz—are likely to find this watered down, general audiences will find it lightweight but likeable. Two questions: Is Hank Azaria in such great shape because he’s so often called upon to play nude scenes, or does he seek parts with nude scenes to show off his physique? And, can it be only a coincidence that 20 years ago a movie called The Running Man was directed by a former TV star (Paul Michael Glaser) in search of a new career?

—m. faust

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