BASED on an American TV series about a dumb police force in Reno, this big screen outing is as good or as bad as you might expect. Basically, it is a dirty-minded sitcom stretched to only just feature length (a trim 84 mins). The plot has the Reno team of incompetents, right, attending a police convention in Miami but finding all other attendees quarantined inside the convention centre. So they are asked to take over policing. That means a lot of crashed police cars, beach patrols leering at underclad girls, getting unwittingly involved with local gangsters and ultimately making a mess of everything. The crew, led by shorts-wearing gay guy Lt Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) do turn in some comic moments, including the scene at their seedy hotel when the drunken team wander around interrupting colleagues’ solo sex jaunts. And there is a jolly scene on a topless beach where they have to deal with a dead whale. It is also a pleasant change to find a Hollywood film populated by creepy, ugly leading men and women rather than tarted-up glam types. Yes, I did laugh, sometimes at the sheer grossness of the routines, occasionally at a genuinely funny moment. But perhaps the team should have stuck to the small screen where they really belong. | 
