There's a lot of potential within the concept of the film to be yet another great buddy film, Murphy still has comedic talents and Owen Wilson is good when acting in inept roles as was shown in "The Haunting".

Hey, remember when Eddie Murphy had a career? And remember when he was funny? I can barely think back to when he made me laugh. It was as far back as his comedy special "delirious" in which he was dressed in a costume that was only stylish in the eighties. After that is was pretty much a downhill spiral of good and bad movies, the bad movies outweighing the good, with the exception of the great "Shrek". Then in the late nineties his edge was snuffed out and he's made nothing but family films and soft-core adventures. He's softened up so much it's sad; it's not watching Eddie Murphy anymore, it's watching "The Comedian formerly known as..."; everytime I see his name on-screen I can almost picture that stupid symbol Prince used, because Murphy is no longer funny, and continues to be only a shell of his former self.
        After "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" was basically panned by critics and flopped big time at the box-office, he made this incredibly bad remake of the influential series of the same name. As a matter of fact, the name is the only thing faithful as we watch a technical mess onscreen. The film written by four (count 'em) four screenwriters is a collaborative mess that seemed to be a mixture of four different plots and ideas meshed so badly into one disgusting mold. Sure, it sounds like I'm being cruel to Murphy, and many people will debate that he's had a great career, but in my eyes he's made nothing but duds. It's easy to distinguish the original series which teamed an African American man and white man together for the first time causing controversy but inspiring influence, to this mess which just fosters ethnic stereotypes in many ways.
        Murphy is the ego-maniacal boxer Kelly Robinson, but it seems as if the writers as spoofing African Americans; he's aided by an entourage of African American men who are uneducated imbeciles to Robinson who wears a lot of jewelry and is very moronic, then there's Wilson's character who is your basic inept, un-cool white guy who can't do anything right and tries spout hip lingo when instructed by Robinson but just continues to look un-cool. It's evident by the bad script that Murphy and Wilson ad-lib most of the material. I suspected that fact while watching Murphy's performance as he delivered his mile-a-minute harangues and erratic lines that seemed too impromptu to have been written. The script is awful, which is amazing considering the team it took to write it.
        There an awful line where Wilson's character is being shown the plans for a gathering of terrorists and he replies: "This is the who's who of international bad guys". International bad guys? I quivered with great abhorrence at that ridiculous line, and at one point, an operative describes terrorists as "Evil-doers". So that's where president Bush got that term from! Also, the screenwriters work at their hardest to create memorable sequences but instead borrow from other films, for example when Wilson's character attempts to profess his love to Jansenn's character as Murphy's character tells him what to say ala "Cerino DeBergerac", but it's such an off scene, that it didn't work in the long run, and the scene where Robinson and Scott fight in the tunnel it's such a rip-off of "48 Hours" and "They Live" that it's pitiful.
        Anyways, aside from the bad script, there's a cast of actors that basically have nothing to do; Murphy is as un-funny as he can get and boy does he look like he's trying hard! He delivers line after line without any laughs and looks like a comedian dying on stage with sweats and sad empty grins, Wilson looks very low-key during his performance and often looks extremely bored while attempting to spark chemistry with Murphy. There's no chemistry between these two actors, and the characters work too well. Murphy is so obnoxious he's impossible to like, and Wilson is so dull he's impossible to root for.
        Also, I know there's a super-villain somewhere in this film, but I can't discover where; the often memorable Malcolm McDowell plays the main super-villain Arnold Gundars but he has only about a total of seven short scenes in the entire film that it's impossible to even consider him a part of the cast. Also, Famke Jansenn plays the love interest Rachel Wright, but she has nothing to do in the film and looks bored whenever delivering her lines; also when she turns out to be a villain (don't be mad at the spoiler, you're not missing much) she's so withdrawn from the role, it's impossible to feel threatened by her. If you compare her roles from this to her premiere into acting in the James Bond flick "GoldenEye", you'll notice the difference. Also, the hilarious Gary Gole has a meager part as a rival agent in the film, but he's so under-used he had no impact on the story.
        Director Betty Thomas whose film credits include family fodder as "Parenthood" and "Dr. Dolittle", poorly directs this bungle of a mess often concocting a dreary and dim setting for a film intended to be a fun buddy romp.

This is one of the worst television-to-film adaptations I have ever seen. This is an embarrassing mess mixing a horrible script, terrible special-effects and a horrible cast with an eventual unfulfilling end-product.

• The characters from the TV series are reversed in this film version. In the original TV series, Kelly Robinson (not Alexander Scott) was the white guy and the athlete, while Alexander Scott was the black guy and the non-athlete. In both cases, however, the Bill Cosby /'Murphy, Eddie' character was a less experienced spy than the Robert Culp /Owen Wilson character.
   

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