Good Boys

Max Cohen is a struggling fat middle-aged private eye going through a midlife crisis and a "dry spell"-- he hasn't had a case in weeks-- and regrets giving up a job with the Miami PD-- and the pension that came with it-- to chase a dream.

Unfortunately, that dream has turned into a nightmare. His shikseh wife Mary and their seven daughters live like "huddled masses" on a rickety yawl with a 10-year list that is slowly sinking into Biscayne Bay. The list has caused the kids to walk funny when on land. To make matters worse, with a hurricane called Larry fast approaching, Max's oldest daughter, 20-year-old Jessica (who can't wait to jump ship), is getting married at the end of the week. He doesn't know how he's going to pay for it and secretly hopes the hurricane hits first.

But when a mysterious Cuban offers him and his "partner" Charles "Chuck" Song-- a hefty little middle-aged Korean with dubious martial arts skills-- a job finding a missing box, Max jumps at the chance because it looks simple enough and confirms his obsession with finding “signs” to direct his life and to prove it has meaning (his catch phrase is: “Don't worry, everything is going to be all right!”). Sadly, sustaining that positive belief that God exists and the Universe cares, makes Max willing to bargain his fees down to nearly nothing-- with nothing up front. This alarms the Buddhist in Chuck.

They soon discover Cubans stole the box and are beaten by a gang in Liberty City because Max refuses to pay them for the information. Money borrowed from Mary to get him through the day, is stolen. Taking this case has caused the team pain and made them poorer. Frustrated and because they can't speak Spanish, they opt to seek out a bilingual snitch named Surfer Jose. Afraid upon hearing the name of the client, he tries to escape in a wild Jet Ski chase off of South Beach. Caught, he tells them where the box may be hidden: a Miami banana processing plant.

Larry strikes first however, leaving the family yawl stuck in the top of a banyan tree. Unfortunately for Max, hurricane winds and flooding couldn't stop the wedding at an outdoor event space called Vizcaya Gardens, a tourist trap that takes pride in “riding out any storm.”

Now under enormous pressure to retrieve the yawl and to finish the investigation so he can get paid to front the wedding, Max coaxes Chuck to pretend they're FDA inspectors (they have shiny gold badges and know how to use them!). Boxes of crated bananas are found hidden in the back of the plant. Suspicious of the owner (Rivas), the team threatens him and his workers with deportation and “closes” the plant because of the improper storage of the bananas. The next day, disguised as fruit-- Max as a cornucopia, Chuck as a banana-- they take advantage of the Carnival-like "Festival of the Raft" parade honoring the balseros-- Cuban refuges who escaped to Miami via rafts-- by dancing away from the parade to a back door at the banana factory.

The festive fruits enter and discover a vintage box hidden among the banana crates. Suddenly, their employer appears and demands that it be handed over unopened. Max refuses. He wants to see what he's been risking his life for. Before it can be resolved, Rivas and his small band of "weekend revolutionaries" descend upon them with machetes and nicely starched camo wear. As it turns out, the box contains the mummified balls of Christopher Columbus. It seems Queen Isabella took them as collateral and made them into earrings. As long as Spain had them in its possession, it remained the most powerful nation on earth. When they disappeared, Spain's status in the world plummeted. Soon a legend grew that whoever possesses the things becomes invincible. But this group has control only for a moment before three old men representing the organized crime syndicate known as the "Black Cigar" make their entrance with machine gun blasts from their antique Thompsons. The feeble cigar smoking bad guys reveal that they have “owned the balls” for hundreds of years, their families using them to create a secret criminal empire rivaling the Mafia. This explanation is interrupted when men in trench coats get the drop on everyone. They want the balls for the good ol' U. S. of A. The head of the Black Cigar throws an old school smoke bomb (it looks like an anarchists bomb of yore, its wick sparking) into the fray and all hell breaks loose as Rivas escapes with the "balls."

The slowest chase scene ever filmed (hey, there's a parade hogging the streets!) ends in a wreck at the foot of the Goodyear blimp during a public ceremony on Watson Island in downtown Miami. Rivas, in desperation, kidnaps the Mayor of Miami and stuffs him and his motley crew into the blimp's cramped gondola. Chuck manages to sneak on board. Max-the-Cornucopia, so very frustrated and angry at being used-- and not getting paid for it-- grabs a mooring rope in his effort to get at Rivas and is hoisted into the air as the pilot is ordered to go to Cuba. To make matters worse for Max, the wedding is just a few hours away. Thankfully, the blimp loses altitude through a combination of sharp machetes, Max's weight, Chuck's confined fighting style, and the Sunday Miami Herald (thrown into an engine by an irate retiree from his condo balcony).

After crashing, Max and Chuck are arrested along with everyone else. Chuck grabs the "balls,” hides them under his banana costume, and manages to sell the Mayor on letting Max attend his daughter's wedding for the good publicity it will bring the mayor on his pending reelection.

Led in chains, Max attends the wedding as a damaged and somewhat incoherent bowl of fruit while Chuck slips Mary the "Columbus earrings." Seeing her wear them, Max shouts, as he's led away by the cops, the closing lines: “Don't worry, everything is going to be all right!