Jury Duty (1995)

Starring: Pauly Shore, Tia Carrere, Stanley Tucci, Richard Riehle, Abe Vigoda, Brian Doyle-Murray, Shelley Winters, Charles Napier, Andrew Dice Clay, and Dick Vitale
Grade: D+

I don’t hate Jury Duty nearly as much as everyone else in the film industry seems to.

Summary

To open the film, we see SWAT pull up to some abandoned house and arrest Carl Wayne Bishop (Sean Whalen).

After this, we see hapless loser Tommy Collins (Shore) fail at his audition for a male strip club owned by his Uncle Sal (Clay) who hired everyone but him. Though Tommy is searching for a job, he’s not exactly determined. Right after, we see him lounging around his mom’s (Winters) mobile home with his little dog Peanut. Mom shows Tommy a jury duty notice in the mail and tells him that though it doesn’t pay much, they sometimes put people in an amazing hotel if the case is of importance. Tommy isn’t interested because he’s perfectly fine with just chilling at home. Mom’s boyfriend Jed (Napier) shows up and after explaining some asinine get-rich-quick scheme revolving around shipping Styrofoam to Mexico, the subject changes because Jed and Tommy’s mother give Tommy the news that they are going to Las Vegas to get married…without Tommy. They’re also taking the mobile home, forcing Tommy to stay with the Woodalls for the time being. Since the Woodall family is insane, Tommy freaks, jumps into the dumpster, and grabs his jury duty letter. He heads to the courthouse, thinking he’s automatically going to be on one of those big trials that’ll get him a nice hotel to stay at. Outside of the courthouse, he runs into some guy trying to get out of jury duty by faking a head wound. Another juror named Frank (Tucci) offers to help the random guy. Later, we see Tommy on his first trial but after finding out that the case he’s on will only be a few days, he acts like he knows the defendant. He gets excused and sent to a different jury. Trying to get to one that includes a hotel stay, Tommy keeps on sabotaging trials until he’s finally placed on the jury for accused murderer Carl Wayne Bishop. It’s perfect for Tommy because the judge (Vigoda) makes it known that it will be long, and the jury will have hotel accommodations.

He’s selected after some lying ass speech about wanting to know “the truth”, and another juror named Monica (Carrere) takes notice of him.

Soon after, all the jurors are sent to a hotel, but they are sent to the one still under construction, and it sucks. Each juror has a roommate too, and Tommy has to room with his old principal from high school, Principal Beasley (Riehle). Since Tommy was one of those kids that used to fuck around all the time in high school, they get off to a bad start. After not being able to fall sleep because of Principal Beasley’s self-help tapes that keep him awake, the first day at trial does not go well, neither does his flirting with Monica. That night after Beasley pulls the same thing again and Tommy can’t sleep, he sneaks out of his room and demands another room from the hotel manager. The guy refuses, even after Tommy almost fights him. However, once the guy gets word of a few more room cancellations in the fancy part of the hotel, they come to an agreement. Tommy gets one of the posh suites, as long as he promotes the hotel on television, which he does after the bus pulls up to the courtroom the next day and all of the jurors are on the news for a brief minute. Following another day at trial, Tommy goes back to stay in the hotel’s best suite, and it’s awesome. Of course, his staying in this room is a secret to all of the other jurors. The next day though, it’s time to make a decision on Carl Wayne Bishop, and the jurors are sent to the back room to vote.

Since this would end Tommy’s “vacation” in the nice hotel suite, he decides to milk the hell out of it and be the one person to vote “Not Guilty” (12 Angry Men style). Since the jurors have to be in full agreement, everything is stalled. They all want to kill Tommy, but he’s okay with trying to convince everyone Bishop’s not guilty, as long as he can stay in the hotel as long as possible.

My Thoughts:

I do love me some Pauly Shore, but Jury Duty might have been one of his weaker efforts through no fault of his own. Shore does his thing, and I appreciate that, but this script isn’t as wacky as it should be.

I’m not going to bash Jury Duty as much as you would expect because I still enjoyed watching it. Shore’s antics are still funny to me, and there’s still some funny scenes in the movie, like the sequence where Tommy tries to get out of each jury by lying and getting kicked off each one until he lands on the right trial. I thought the tour guide bit was funny, and the opening with Shore as a stripper set the tone for the film pretty well. The stripper scene in particular is where we get one of the most 90s scenes ever, with Shore talking with fellow 90s comedian Andrew Dice Clay. I would even argue Clay should’ve had a bigger role because his star power would’ve helped, but this is more of a minor suggestion than a needed fix. Along with some decently funny scenes and moments, this isn’t a movie that will gain Shore any new fans. I’ll still argue for him any day of the week, but this wouldn’t be an example I would use to defend him.

In Jury Duty, he plays to his strengths very well, playing a screw-up that goofs off in any given situation and looks like he’s having a great time doing it. I always find his characters innocent, and though he’s a nuisance to all the other characters, he’s a likable nuisance.

It’s just that this script wasn’t what it needed to be for a Pauly Shore movie, and that’s saying something.

For example, I could’ve done without the dog humor. Nothing Peanut did was remotely funny.

The dream sequence was cheap looking, and there wasn’t enough plot to give the supporting characters more to do. They didn’t include nearly enough scenes to play up the romance angle between Shore and co-star Tia Carrere either. They teased it a lot, but it didn’t go anywhere until the ending. However, much more was needed between them to spice the story up a bit. There was also a confusing scene where Tommy dresses up in drag to have a conjugal visit with suspected killer Carl Wayne Bishop, updating him on how he’s convincing the jury that Bishop’s innocent. At the end of the scene, Bishop still tries having sex with Tommy, even after he tells him that it’s a disguise, and Tommy starts screaming at the guards to let him out. He then stops, smiles, and slowly creeps out of the picture, sliding down. Are they implying that Bishop started fucking him and he liked it? I know this is a ridiculous question, but it was a confusing end to the scene, and it’s never mentioned or alluded to after this. It just transitions to the next morning when Tommy goes in to talk to the other jurors. What the hell happened there? If they did fuck, wouldn’t this give us even more comedic directions to take the last part of the film? Why have this inexplicable and unexpected scene and then go nowhere with it? This could’ve added a whole other layer of chaos had they ran with it. I still don’t even know if it happened though because nothing is said. I guess the way they set it up was a way to imply it, but I’m honestly just guessing.

I liked how the whole jury hated Tommy so much, they made him the jury foreman just so he could deliver the bad news to Bishop if they named him guilty. They all knew it was the worst job to have but since they all collectively don’t like Tommy, they give him the responsibility. This and the fact that this dude is such a slacker that he’s willing to drag out jury duty just to stay at a hotel, is actually a pretty funny concept to me. Shore playing this up as annoying as possible, angering everyone he’s on the jury with, is something he was clearly born to play. The supporting cast is also better than you would think for a film like this, consisting of a lot of veteran actors. Unfortunately, most of them are pretty underutilized. Stanley Tucci overacts the shit out of his role but considering the “B Movie” quality that Jury Duty has, and the cartoonish “TV Movie” ending that followed, it wasn’t completely out of place.

As a comedy, it has its moments. However, even for Pauly Shore fans, Jury Duty isn’t something I’d recommend to a lot of people. It’s a film with a type of “stupid humor” not everyone has the patience for.