Side Kicked

“Rush Hour 2” saved the best for last. The very last. The biggest laughs, the most fun this reteaming of Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker has to offer, occur in the outtakes that take over the screen after the story, such as it is, has been told.

Here’s Tucker, with an increasingly comical lack of success, gamely trying to pronounce “gefilte fish.” Here he is taking a cell phone call from a friend in the middle of a scene, then handing the phone to an astonished Chan. Here’s both of them looking at the crashed and burned body of one of the film’s bad guys as Tucker cracks, “He ain’t gonna be in ‘Rush Hour 3.”’

Outtakes are a tradition in Chan films, usually emphasizing how dangerous stunts are by showing what they look like when they don’t work. In “Rush Hour 2” these truly funny, off-the-cuff scenes emphasize how lacking in spontaneity and freshness this inevitable sequel is.

Inevitable, for once, for good reason, for the decision to pair Chan’s squeaky-clean Hong Kong Inspector Lee with Tucker’s glibly amoral LAPD Det. James Carter for the original “Rush Hour” was about as inspired a notion as the movie business gets these days, and one that was, at least in theory, worth repeating.

Though he’s getting older, Chan is still the most watchable of action stars, a human special effect memorably summarized in the ad line for his “Rumble in the Bronx:” “No fear. No stunt man. No equal.” Here he gets to battle on bamboo scaffolding, to use waste baskets as deadly weapons and to try to take seriously silly stuff like having a tiny grenade taped inside his mouth.

Speaking of mouths, not for nothing does Don Cheadle (in an unbilled cameo) call Tucker’s character “7-Eleven” because “his mouth never closes.” A study in brash, say-anything comedy, Tucker finds the humor in everything from a nightclub karaoke segment to coming up with “Egyptian-style” martial arts moves.

Maybe it’s because these guys don’t have to do much to be entertaining that so little of interest has been provided for them to do. “Rush Hour 2” has an anemic, haphazard feeling to its plotting, as witness the unnerving combination of “The Last Emperor’s” John Lone, comic Alan King and young “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” star Zhang Ziyi in supporting villainous roles. But then this is a film whose main bad guys, Ricky Tan and the Triads, sound like a cover band that plays at Hong Kong bar mitzvahs.

Written by Jeff Nathanson and directed by Brett Ratner, “Rush Hour 2” begins with Lee and Carter as such good buddies that they join in a chorus of the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” as they cruise the streets of Hong Kong, where Carter has determined to take a vacation so he can hang with his pal.

Crime, wouldn’t you know it, never takes a holiday, and right away a bomb goes off in Hong Kong’s U.S. Consulate and Lee feels honor-bound to try to find the responsible parties and drags an unwilling Carter along with him.

Soon enough--in fact far too soon--people are saying things like “what I am about to tell you cannot leave this room” and talk centers on the super bill, which is not Secret Service code for former President Clinton but a hard-to-detect counterfeit U.S. $100 bill.

It’s hard to get very excited about these doings because “Rush Hour 2” is only interested in a plot as an excuse for the two stars to bicker like the Honeymooners, leer at attractive, barely dressed women and trade theoretically good-humored racial insults. Brotherhood, it’s a wonderful thing.

While no amount of nonsense can obliterate the shine on the Chan-Tucker chemistry, it can put a serious tarnish on it. “Rush Hour 2” feels out of shape and self-satisfied, as if it knew it didn’t have to try very hard. Because there probably will be a “Rush Hour 3,” it’s not too early to start hoping that it will be as funny as its outtakes. It doesn’t seem like a lot to ask.

MPAA rating: PG-13, for action violence, language and some sexual material. Times guidelines: lots of kicking and leering.

‘Rush Hour 2’

Jackie Chan: Lee

Chris Tucker: Carter

John Lone: Ricky Tan

Zhang Ziyi: Hu Li

Roselyn Sanchez: Isabella

An Arthur Sarkissian and Roger Birnbaum production, released by New Line Cinema. Director Brett Ratner. Producers Arthur Sarkissian, Roger Birnbaum. Executive producers Andrew Z. Davis, Michael De Luca, Toby Emmerich. Screenplay Jeff Nathanson, based on the characters created by Ross La Manna. Cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti. Editor Mark Helfrich. Costumes Rita Ryack. Music Lalo Schifrin. Production design Terence Marsh. Art directors Andrew Max Cahn, James F. Tocci. Set decorators Lance J. Lombardo, Rick Simpson. Running time: 1 hour, 56 minutes.

In general release.