Starring Kevin James and Jayma Mays. Rated PG.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop stars TV–sitcom vet Kevin James as a portly T.J.-Hooker wannabe who patrols an endless string of clothing stores and junk-food kiosks on a Segway. Blart can practically make his two-wheeler sit up and beg for dog biscuits.

Yet despite the fact that his mechanical steed comes fully equipped with a nifty flashing light perched between the handlebars, he’s the Rodney Dangerfield of the Orange Julius set. Nobody gives him any respect.

Paul’s luck seems to take a turn for the better when he meets the attractive Amy (Jayma Mays). Amy, who sells hair extensions for a company called Unbeweavable, actually finds the hefty mall cop quite sweet.

But their budding romance is nipped in the bud when an anxious Blart makes a drunken ass out of himself at a company party. Paul’s chance for redemption arrives when a gang of skateboarding super-thugs takes over the mall in a multimillion-dollar scheme that involves scamming a series of credit-card numbers. Discovering that the gang has taken Amy and several other mall workers hostage, Blart becomes a one-man, roly-poly army of revenge.

Because this light-hearted spin on the Die Hard series is stuck in the January release doldrums—after everybody from Jim Carrey to Adam Sandler have dished out the big-budget comedy gravy—you might assume that it has leftover turkey written all over it. But Kevin James, who also cowrote the winning screenplay, manages to find a touching thread of humanity underneath any number of surprisingly clever jokes.

It helps that journeyman director Steve Carr (Are We There Yet?, Daddy Day Care) moves things along quickly and efficiently. There’s still a smile on your face when the closing credits begin to roll, after a brisk 90 minutes.