This movie is a comedy but not for chunk eaters. It tells a typical story of a gang band robbery by a group of Hispanic's in a deserted land store somewhere before the borders with Mexico.At the beginning of the move the Hispanic's kidnap an African-American, some weirdos and the store owner. The local authorities are totally incapable of managing the situation (hostage) and the funny thing is that, when the local sheriff calls for help, help cant find its way to the small deserted village where the story unfolds. This is to show how central governments neglect near border or small cities in USA. Many other examples of USA government, social and racial mockery through the movie, always funny. I didn't like the end. It was so typical that it didn't fit to a movie like this one, a sort of "political" slapstick comedy.

I saw this film aboard a bus, in November of 2000, on my way from the Tallahassee Amtrak station and Walt Disney World (the tracks were being worked on). I was thus a captive audience for the bus driver's taste in movies; otherwise, I never would have seen it. It's hard to imagine that Barry Corbin and John Cullum (from Northern Exposure), and Julie Hagerty (from the Airplane movies) would have wasted their time with anything this bad: nobody could be that hard up for work.That's not to say that the movie didn't get a few laughs from me, and from the other passengers on the bus. But we weren't laughing WITH it; we were laughing AT it.

Even Jamie Foxx himself was embarrassed to be part of this mediocre comic vehicle. But it really isn't as bad as most critics and audiences felt. The problem is Jamie is about the only lifeforce in this badly written comedy. He noticeably wasn't reciting lines straight from the script, b/c his one-liners were the main elements that kept this movie afloat. He holds his own, even when it reaches the peak of comic lameness. And I did laugh a few times, chuckled more though. But you can't help but feel "Held Up" didn't reach up to its potential, in fact it comes far from it. However, it's not a bad film. It's overall pretty harmless and mildly likeable. But there are much better comedies out there. And this is the least funniest of Jamie's work.

Jamie Foxx comes forth with another dumbass comedy, but at least in this one he pretends that he can possibly portray a respectable person. Trapped in a tiny town full of rednecks, Michael (Foxx) tries to recover from his fiancee (Nia Long, whose talent was even more wasted than it was in Big Momma's House) leaving him just after his beloved car was stolen, when he finds himself stuck in the middle of a botched robbery. Yes, this is your stereotypical hick town. They have to have a tremendously fat guy (remember Billy Bob from Varsity Blues?), the police force winds up running around in their boxer shorts, and the sheriff seems to care more about the local sporting events than he does about saving the hostages in the gas station. This movie may not have been so awful had it not been for the fact that the writers were clearly trying to grab for laughs every second of the way, while ignoring the necessary elements (even in a slapstick comedy) of reality and credibility. (spoilers) The robbers become likeable, so of course the film has to have a happy ending. That's fine, but what happened? They got on the bus, rode off into the sunset, and evidently the idiot police force went back to their baseball game, because they ignored the fact that the attempted robbers just drove away. `Oh well, let's just all go home!' Even country police forces aren't that stupid.Held Up is slow paced, it's often boring, and it takes a serious situation and tries to get stupid laughs by making ridiculous efforts to make it all funny. It tries to force a smile on unhappy material, and was therefore doomed from the beginning. Hardcore Jamie Foxx fans may enjoy his cornball antics in this movie, but anyone looking for even the smallest hint of quality in their cinematic entertainment would be best advised to ignore this garbage.