Dumb & Dummy

Reviewed - The Pacifier: Considering the narcoleptic torpor Vin Diesel brings to his performance as a Navy Seal entrusted with the care of five suburban kids, it would be safe to assume that the star believes The Pacifier's high concept to be so hilarious that all he needs to do is turn up. He's really big and they're really small. He's usually in violent action films, but here he is in a light family comedy. Why bother trying to lighten the tone any further?

This stunning comic conceit - no less brilliant for its being called into action by Hollywood twice a year or so - is so delightful in itself that timing and mood will surely take care of themselves.

It seems not. Diesel's grimly impassive demeanour, all mean stares and subsonic grumbling, creates an uncomfortable atmosphere. I never thought I would compare any performance unfavourably with Arnold Schwarzenegger's in Kindergarten Cop, but, it cannot be denied that, in his comic roles, the Governor did manage to suggest there was a buttery core deep beneath his bullet-proof carapace. Diesel, though he looks like a huge baby himself, never convincingly softens. You feel genuinely concerned for his vulnerable charges.

It doesn't help that the spy plot is absurdly complicated. Indeed, I am still not sure why Vin has to do what he has to do. There is some stuff with a helicopter and some stuff with a mysterious suitcase, then some stuff with Ninjas. None of this, however, is quite so tedious as the stuff with the nappies.