The first scene sets up the rest of “Taxi” fairly well. A cyclist races through Manhattan at unbelievable speeds, whisking through Macy’s, then a subway station before speeding off a bridge and landing on top of a passing truck.

If they had filmed it better, some of these stunts could have looked plausible instead of obviously computer-rendered. The rest of the movie follows suit by trying hard to look and feel like an actual movie, but gets stuck in neutral.

Queen Latifah stars as Belle, a bike messenger-turned-cab-driver in New York. One day on the job, she gets mixed up with bumbling detective Washburn, played by Jimmy Fallon. The two get caught up in a plot to capture four supermodels from Brazil who have started robbing banks all over Manhattan.

The premise is ridiculous to the point of being funny. Based on the 1998 French film of the same name, the original went with the silly idea and filled it with zany action and dialog for a fun, light-hearted ride. It wasn’t a great movie, but it wasn’t trying to be.

That seems to be the problem with the new version. Everyone in it seems to be trying too hard. Latifah tries to look hip and cool with lame one-liners, but does it so over the top, she just begins to look like a parody of herself.

Like Halle Berry, Latifah is an actress with amazing talent, yet both of them are throwing it away to make mediocre fare such as this. The lure of easy shoots and big budgets must overwhelm any desire they have to take a chance on smaller, riskier projects.

But Latifah’s mistakes are easily overshadowed by Jimmy Fallon. In his first lead role, Fallon never strikes the audience as funny. There are plenty of times when the movie pauses right after one of his jokes for laughter, but all that can be heard are groans from the audience.

It’s actually kind of scary to think someone who is so dim-witted could actually be walking around New York with a badge and gun. His ignorance is so far beyond the standard fare of bumbling, comedic cops that you fear for the people around him.

The supermodels playing the bank robbers have all of 10 lines among them, mostly in Portuguese. The director was smart to limit their parts to wearing skimpy clothes, followed by stripping down to skimpier clothes and then shooting a few guns. Their part is too small to be offended by any acting.

Unfortunately, the director and his crew could not handle the action as well. There have been countless films with exciting car chases, such as 1998’s “Ronin” or the 1985 crime drama “To Live and Die in L.A.” These movies kept the excitement when they cut the music and dialog to let the roars of the engines overpower the chase scenes.

Here, every action scene is exactly the same. Long, swooping shot of one car, then crane shot of the other car, followed by a close-up of supermodels and finished with a close-up of Fallon acting all scared and confused. Repeat from there.

It’s all so stiff and stale, you don’t even care when you see the cars racing down the streets in between the massive skyscrapers in Manhattan. What should look like an adrenaline rush is instead watered down by repetitive shot after shot that can’t convey a sense of speed.

With its bad acting, plot, action and everything else, “Taxi” barely registers as a real movie. With such films being more of an attack on the senses than a silly little enjoyment, people can only hope to ignore them, and eventually they will fade away.