Look. This isn't a good movie. It's watchable. It has its moments, but it's not good. And it suffers from the unforgivable crime that was so so prevalent in the late 90s early 2000s, and that's the whole commentary on reality TV and how it's not really reality, but produced by slicksters and fame hungry wanna be's, blah blah blah. Snooze. I hate reality TV too but I might hate the genre of "mocking" it even more.

Anyway, I can forgive the two leads. My heart goes out to them because they are being the things we want them to be, and we just didn't bite. It's no surprise Eddie Murphy is a humorless grump these days. He's tried repeatedly to give us the stuff he thinks we want from him but it just hasn't worked in forever. Even as recently as Tower Heist, there were flashes of old Eddie in there but we didn't care. I blame us.

De Niro however has been more or less successful with mocking his image and this was right around the time I think it started to sour for him. Watching it now it's basically the only De Niro we know, the old curmudgeon with a heart of gold. It's still entertaining.