‘Reno 911’ arrestingly funny

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

Clown cops converge on Miami, cause chaos.

Q: Can a comedy that depends on too-tight short-shorts, gratuitous nudity, self-abuse, outsized booty, er, booby, er, body parts, and a downpour of bloody whale blubber to grab laughs actually be funny?

A: YEEESSS! Riotously and raucously so.

Based on the Comedy Central hit series that spoofs the vidicam-verite ride-along style of “Cops,” “Reno 911!: Miami” sends the doofus deputies of the fictional Reno Sheriff’s Department to sizzling Miami Beach where they proceed to bungle every assignment that comes their way.

And there are a lot of those assignments, because all of the city’s regular officers are quarantined at a downtown cop convention owing to a homeland security scare. Only the out-of-towners, who missed out on the lockdown owing to a lack of proper convention credentials (a typical “Reno”-style screw-up), are available to handle incidents ranging from stinky beached whales to slimy Latin druglords.

Considering that this lot can’t even drive their cruisers out of the Miami PD’s underground parking lot without crashing into each other, it’s fair to say that the city is essentially on its own, civic protectionwise.

They can’t shoot straight (a circular firing squad episode featuring a hapless chicken proves that early on), they can’t drive right (see: parking lot mayhem, above), they can’t remember who they got drunk with last night and how they got this brand-new breast tattoo (well, one of them, at least, can’t).

The style is crude with all the hand-held camera work deliberately calling attention to its jittery self. The comedy is cruder. What do lonely cops at loose ends do for fun in a strange town late at night? Stay in their lonely motel rooms and indulge in pathetic personal pleasuring. Pull Peeping-Tom camera back from their brightly lit windows to reveal this sorry, screamingly hysterical spectacle.

With eight individuals harboring distinctive quirks and kinks and oddball pathologies, dysfunction takes many forms. Passive-aggressive Deputy Trudy Wiegel (Kerri Kenney-Silver, doing triple duty as co-screenwriter and executive producer) has the simmering hots for hotpants-wearing flamboyantly gay Lt. Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon, also a screenwriter and executive producer).

Blowzy, buxom blonde Deputy Clementine Johnson (Wendi McLendon-Covey) has a problem with men (can’t get enough of them) and studly Deputy S. Jones (Cedric Yarbrough) has a mirror-image problem with women (can’t get enough of them).

Mannish Deputy Cherisa Kimball (Mary Birdsong) has a problem with gender identity. She adamantly denies she’s a lesbian but freely admits that her many female best buddies are. Deputy James Garcia (Carlos Alazraqui) has a pronounced racist streak. Big-bottomed Deputy Raineesha Williams (Niecy Nash, wearing a bodacious posterior prosthesis) has a problem determining the proper attire for one so generously, netherly endowed. (A thong, my dear, is oh-so no-no).

Finally, there’s Deputy Travis Junior (Robert Ben Garant), who’s pretty gung-ho about this police business, but compared to his compadres, he’s as close to normal as anyone in this group gets. Maybe that’s because Garant was so busy co-writing, executive producing and also directing the picture that he didn’t have time to flesh out the character’s foibles.

Raunchy, irreverent and disjointed, “Reno” hits the comic bull’s-eye more often than it misses. If R-rated slapstick with a dash of sly wit is your thing, don’t you dare miss it.

Reno 911!: Miami

* * *

Director: Robert Ben Garant

Cast: Garant, Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Niecy Nash and Wendi McLendon-Covey

Running Time: 1:24

Rating: R; language, sexual situations, nudity, gross humor