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BY ROB WATSON
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In Adam Shankman’s heavy blunt object of a comedy, Vin Diesel’s Shane Wolf is a Navy SEAL who becomes a bodyguard/nanny for the spoiled suburban children of a murdered Pentagon employee whose widow is away. The film’s antecedents are Kindergarten Cop and Mr. Mom, with Shane’s granite machismo (Diesel even looks sort of phallic) yielding to the cockle-warming force of the adorable moppets as he protects them from terrorists and a bullying vice-principal (Brad Garrett). "Will my boobs be as big as yours someday?" the younger girl asks Shane in what may actually be the movie’s cleverest moment. He tortures the unruly foursome with a grueling regimen of Navy-style discipline, though anyone who’s seen Hirokazu Koreeda’s Nobody Knows will realize that things could be a lot worse. For what it’s worth, the canned high jinks showcase Diesel at his most expressive. The real mystery is the screenplay: credited to Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Comedy Central’s hilarious Reno 911!), it plays like the kind of thing that, a decade ago, would have starred Hulk Hogan and gone straight to video. At the Apple Valley, Entertainment, Flagship, Harbour Mall, Holiday, Providence Place 16, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas. (91 minutes)
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