Protocol is a poor attempt at comedy with Capraesque aspirations. Goldie Hawn plays Sunny, a ditsy cocktail waitress in a sleazy bar who becomes a national heroine after inadvertently saving the life of a visiting Arab Emir and getting shot in the butt for her troubles.
The Emir takes a fancy to Sunny and the US administration wants to establish a military base in his region. The State Department plan to allow the Emir to claim Sunny as his wife. They conspire to offer Sunny a job within the Protocol Department of the Government.
The film is slap dash and Goldie's charm is wearing thin here. She is supposed to be a blonde bimbo but pretty soon she comes across as sharp as a cookie with an inkling that the State Department are up to something. The Arab men are all sleazy stereotypes lusting after blonde white women. Even when they speak Arabic it sounds gibberish.
There is a party scene set in the bar Hawn used to work in and every cliché walks in to the bar, S&M couples, bikers, gay guys, Japanese businessmen, everyone is having a great time and soon descends into farce because the film has just run out of ideas and cojones to take a satirical bite on US foreign policy
When the penny drops and Sunny realises that she is being used it then becomes more akin to Mr Smith goes to Washington but by then it just becomes mawkish as the comedy has run out of gas.
The Emir takes a fancy to Sunny and the US administration wants to establish a military base in his region. The State Department plan to allow the Emir to claim Sunny as his wife. They conspire to offer Sunny a job within the Protocol Department of the Government.
The film is slap dash and Goldie's charm is wearing thin here. She is supposed to be a blonde bimbo but pretty soon she comes across as sharp as a cookie with an inkling that the State Department are up to something. The Arab men are all sleazy stereotypes lusting after blonde white women. Even when they speak Arabic it sounds gibberish.
There is a party scene set in the bar Hawn used to work in and every cliché walks in to the bar, S&M couples, bikers, gay guys, Japanese businessmen, everyone is having a great time and soon descends into farce because the film has just run out of ideas and cojones to take a satirical bite on US foreign policy
When the penny drops and Sunny realises that she is being used it then becomes more akin to Mr Smith goes to Washington but by then it just becomes mawkish as the comedy has run out of gas.