Held Up (2000)
Average Rating: 3.3/10
Reviews Counted: 30
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 25
Lackluster performances and fluff humor can't keep this wreck from sinking.
Average Rating: 3/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 1 | Rotten: 7
Lackluster performances and fluff humor can't keep this wreck from sinking.
liked it
Average Rating: 2.9/5
User Ratings: 2,588
Movie Info
In this fish-out-of-water comedy, Jamie Foxx plays a man named Michael Dawson, though he's confused for both Puff Daddy and Mike Tyson by the citizenry of the podunk southwest town that serves as the setting for Held Up. Road-tripping Michael and Rae (Nia Long) stop in for gas in Michael's new vintage roadster, but she grabs a ride to the airport with a truck full of cowboys after learning he blew more than 10,000 dollars earmarked for buying a home on the automobile. Moments later, Michael
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Cast
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Jamie Foxx
Michael Dawson -
Nia Long
Rae -
Barry Corbin
Pembry -
Eduardo Yanez
Rodrigo -
John Cullum
Jack -
Jake Busey
Beaumont -
Michael Shamus Wiles
Biker -
Sarah Paulson
Mary -
-
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Andrew Jackson
Swat Team Leader
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Held Up Trailer & Photos
All Critics (35) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (5) | Rotten (25) | DVD (4)
By the end, even the irrepressible Mr. Foxx seems tired and defeated.
Top CriticHeld Up is a fish-out-of-water comedy that is all wet from the start.
This slow and talky sitcom may leave its paying customers feeling Held Up.
There's enough nice timing and character surprises to make it click at least half of the time.
There are points in the movie where you think you're ready to laugh, but, like the movie as a whole, they don't amount to much.
Maybe a few years from now Held Up won't look like the misstep for Jamie Foxx that it appears to be today. But it probably will.
Scenes begin with an amusing premise and a few laughs, but quickly fizzle as the jokes become increasingly one-note.
Eastin's plot never strays from the predictable nor creates the proper comedic tension and urgency needed for the story to work.
Held Up is a real dud, with few laughs, no characterization, little story, a cluster of stereotypes and clichés and just plain nothing for Foxx to do.
In this disjointed comedy, Foxx is just a Murphy clone.
There's an obligatory feel-good ending that's totally unbelievable, and the raunchy first act banter between Foxx and his girlfriend is disconcertingly at odds with the Preston Sturges-style stuff that follows.
It's hard not to wonder if Foxx owed somebody a favor when he signed on to make a movie this amateurish.
It's a movie so foul even the folks at the NAACP Image Awards would have to look the other way.
Thanks to an attractive cast and an air of amiability, much of it works.
Even if it isn't much of a comedy, at least it's a good-spirited one. The cast gives it their all, but the material is hopeless.
Which is scarier: Foxx, abandoned in a hick town, caught up in a botched robbery attempt; or you, trapped inside a theater, forced into watching this god-awful movie?
It might be Foxx who's the hostage in Held Up, but by the time the static, feeble movie crawls to a close it's the audience that will feel trapped.
I'd rather be held up than have to sit through this again.
While an attempt to satirize the conventions of the hostage drama may have seemed an interesting notion, Held Up falls down on almost every count.
Audience Reviews for Held Up
Super Reviewer
A good point is that the movie manages to be moderately funny without being crude or overly sexual... That's hard to find these days. The biggest negative is that virtually the entire plot occurs in one spot, and you get very little change of scenery throughout the entire movie.
If you're looking for continuous laughs, this may not be the movie for you. But if you can endure the slow parts, the humor will sporadically appear.
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Movie: ID: 12456 Title: Held Up Release Date: 2000-05-12 00:00:00.0 MPAA: 3 Status: 1
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