apless cab driver Jimmy Tong (Chan) wants nothing more than to ask the beautiful gallery employee out on a date. But every time he approaches her, he freezes up in embarrassment. Tong is also no match for the bicycle messenger who wants to pummel him. As he tells his friend, "Not everybody who's Chinese is Bruce Lee."
But Tong doesn't shrink from the task of navigating New York's treacherous streets. Challenged by a mysterious woman (Mazar) to traverse a particular course, Tong careens through alleys and down streets at high velocity. Impressed, the woman identifies herself as Steena, an agent of the top-secret CSA, who is looking for a driver for the agency's top spy, the ultra-suave Clark Devlin (Isaacs).
First, he has to lose the "soul patch" and learn the rules. Number one: Don't talk to Mr. Devlin. But as Tong drives the superspy around town, Devlin warms to the likable chauffeur. Tong asks Devlin his secret for wooing the ladies. "Ninety percent of it is the clothes," Devlin tells him. "The other 10 percent is in there"—tapping his chest—"and you've got a lot of it."
At CSA headquarters, meanwhile, technician Del Blaine (Hewitt) impresses her boss with her scientific analysis of the assassination of a CSA agent working undercover in the Banning bottled water company. As a reward, the CSA offers to give her a first field assignment, as Devlin's new partner, to investigate Banning further.
But Devlin narrowly escapes a bombing by Banning's henchmen. Before lapsing into a coma, he gives Tong the keys to his secret weapon: a high-tech tuxedo that endows the wearer with superhuman abilities. Tong takes the suit for a spin, with disastrous results. But before he knows it, Blaine partners up with him, thinking that he is Devlin, and he finds himself inadvertently playing the part on a dangerous assignment.
A curious and uncomfortable fit
The Tuxedo, which marks the directorial debut of former TV-commercial helmer Donovan, tries to weave together a James-Bond spy spoof with trademark Jackie Chan martial-arts action and romantic comedy. But the film stitches sophomoric humor to an idiotic plot, wastes Chan's considerable charisma and martial-arts skills and unravels with a truly irritating performance by Hewitt. The resulting movie chafes in all the wrong places and ill suits someone of Chan's talents.
Hewitt is the film's biggest liability. Whether by design or by accident, her Del Blaine is a grating harpy who motivated one viewer to want to stab her in the neck with a set of pinking shears. The film's conceit is that Hewitt's character and Chan's Tong develop a grudging respect and unspoken attraction to one another during the course of their adventures. The real miracle is that Tong doesn't seek to tear Blaine's heart out the moment she opens her yap.
Beyond that, Donovan et al. make the curious choice of putting Chan in wire rigs for a lot of the action. This ignores Chan's demonstrated ability to perform miraculous moves all on his own, and wastes Chan's otherworldly gifts on otherwise run-of-the-mill stunts. Which is not to say that Chan doesn't commit wholeheartedly to many of the gags. And there's some pleasure to be had watching Chan do amazing things while appearing to be a man incapable of doing them, except for the powers of a magic suit.
As for Hewitt, she is supposedly Chan's near-equal in hand-to-hand combat. But while audiences may have accustomed themselves to the sight of eentsy women kicking butt (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer), seeing the waif-like Hewitt executing roundhouse kicks against hulking assailants stretches the credibility of even the most credulous audience member.
Donovan also shows a fondness for humor that the average sixth-grader would find tasteless, including a urinary shot that opens the movie (and which Donovan reportedly fought to keep, as in, "The pee stays in the picture!"). And there's a long, painful sequence in which a bimbo tries to separate Chan from his pants.
Then there are the numerous inane plot twists to keep Chan in the titular formal wear, placing various scenes in parties, receptions, nightclubs, etc. Oh, and then there's the mystifying choice to have Chan impersonate James Brown.
