Directed by Tim Story, Starring Jimmy Fallon, Queen Latifah, Ann Margaret, Jennifer Esposito and Giselle Bundchen
First off, I already know that a lot of people didn't like this movie much, and I haven't looked up why yet. I'll admit that Taxi is not that flat-out hilarious nor is it anything groundbreakingly original, but it combines elements that audiences go for and presents them in a package that I thought was pretty good entertainment.
The film grabs your attention from the start with an amazing stunt scene: a motorcycle tearing through the streets, alleyways, subway stations, sidewalks of New York in a race against the clock to get from Brooklyn to somewhere in Manhattan and back. The opening credits end with the driver making it to the finish line, taking off her helmet, and surprise it's a woman...Queen Latifah. Her character is apparently, not just any pizza delivery girl/cab driver but the fastest one around. A driver hops into her car at one point early in the movie offering to give her 100 dollars if he'll get her from JFK from midtown Manhattan in 15 minutes. With her trademark large-and-in-charge cockiness, she tells him how she normally doesn't stop for white guys but with him she'll make an exception (the guy's pretty rude to her so you don't really feel bad for him, and also don't get the wrong impression, this isn't a movie about a black person making fun of white people for 2 hours aka Chris Tucker in Rush Hour), and off she goes once again breaking traffic laws left and right, driving so fast that she outruns a couple policemen trying to get her for speeding.
With her driving abilities, she naturally becomes a fitting compliment to Jimmy Fallon's detective Washburn, a cop who's achilles heel is he can't drive a car. When he's dispatched to attempt to stop a bank robbery, he has to call a cab to get to the scene, and that's how the two, through comically unusual circumstances, end up having to team up together until the case is solved and she can get her car back. Like Latifah, Fallon's character doesn't drift too far off from the comic we've come to know on SNL, and part of the joy of watching the film is the the joy this overgrown child has in picking up guns and playing cop.
I don't know about anyone else, but I really thought Latifah and Fallon had a great odd-couple chemistry or should I say lack thereof. You'll have trouble finding two people at such opposite ends of the spectrum from each other. The movie wisely skirts around a road to a love/hate romance, giving Latifah's character a boyfriend who plays a minor role in the picture, and Fallon a crush on his boss (Spin City's Jennifer Esposito), and the funny moments when Esposito shoots down Fallon makes me think the movie is more self-conscious of itself than it lets on.
The movie really does have a lot to it, in my opinion, if you don't go in expecting instantaneous laughs, throwing in some great chase scenes, a murder mystery, and 2 stars with some great comic chemistry.