The Pacifier

A hard-boiled Navy SEAL (Vin Diesel) takes on an assignment for which his military training has hardly prepared him: guarding the five children of a scientist who was killed by terrorists seeking the secret weapons system he had developed. Diesel has amply shown his star presence already, and he may even have a flair for comedy (if Hulk Hogan did, why shouldn’t he?), but he gets no chance to prove it here. Adam Shankman directs in wild lurches, as if he hardly knows how to put a scene together. Since Shankman wangled a “film by” credit, maybe he also should be blamed for the formless, laughless script credited to Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant (whose last job was the execrable Taxi with Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon). The whole cast is wasted—even the wonderful Carol Kane and the reliable Brad Garrett.