Upon being visited by a young famous French designer, who comes to New York, in order to hire them to find her stolen bag, Luis Lopez and Eddie Garcia, two miserable New York detectives of best friends, who do their best and struggle against earning their livings, accept the mission and go to Paris, in order to solve the case.
Luis Guzman is an instantly recognizable character actor who deserves his shot at being the face of a film. It's just unfortunate that the film turns out to be the lethargic and rarely funny fish-out-of-American-water comedy Puerto Ricans in Paris.
Why in the world do the filmmakers go to the trouble of casting Rosario Dawson and Rosie Perez as the detectives' significant others and then leave them in the States away from all the hijinks?
The grand takeaway from Puerto Ricans in Paris, which delivers what you'd expect and not much else, is that someone ought to finally give Luis Guzmán the leading role of a lifetime.
Guzman and Garcia (reunited from HBO's "How to Make It in America") are a joy to watch, and deliver their lines with just enough nuance to make them truly endearing; sometimes it works, others not so much.
There are no laughs, the plot is a bore, and visiting Paris is just an excuse to wheel out postcard backdrops and attractive women. And yet Guzmán and Garcia are good together.
