After he was framed for stealing, police officer Frank loses his job and thus decides to eductate himself to work as a security guard. He becomes friends with the ex-lawyer Norman, who in turn falls in love with supervisor Maggie, the daughter of Cpt. O'Connell. After a robbery of a warehouse, Norman poses as a tricky question; where does the 4 million $ union money go to? It turns out that union president Carlino wants to take the union money by having his men steal the van during the route, use it to finance Colombian drugs, and collect the insurance money. For that purpose, union treasury Lou is shot, and Frank and Norman are framed for his murder. However, Frank and Norman foil the kidnapping of the money van, get rehabilitated, whereas Carlino is arrested.
Canadian comedians Eugene Levy and John Candy starred in seven movies together, but ''Armed and Dangerous'' is often considered one of their weakest efforts, a tiresome, underwhelming comedy. The entire movie looks like anyone could have written it, even a 12-year old based on some simplistic jokes, since the screenwriters (among them even Harold Ramis) seem to have saved their better gags for some other movie. It is puzzling as to how little humor it has, how little it has to offer, and how little inspiration it has to even warrant doing this story in the first place. The opening sequence starts off sympathetically—the main protagonist, cop Frank, climbs up a tall tree to save a cat on top, but once there, realizes he is afraid to climb down, so a fireman truck is called for help, while Frank just tells them to hurry, ''because the cat is scared''—but the viewers will soon be disappointed to find out it is practically the only good joke in the entire film. Too many ideas lead nowhere, are too banal or in a cheap shot, such as the sequence where Frank and Norman hide inside an aerobic class, lie down and watch women's behinds in front of them, or when they disguise themselves as a gay couple—Frank as a transvestite, Norman as a man in a leather costume, which has two holes behind revealing Levy's butt-cheeks. The obligatory car stunt sequence at the end is there to try to save the movie, but the viewers have by that time already wasted their time. Unfortunately, one cannot escape the overall impression of ''Armed and Dangerous'': it is running on empty.
Grade:+
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