We've seen this premise before in countless comedies in the past, an ordinary man with amnesia who finds himself ducking bullets and has to figure out what's going on. It's possible that it could have successfully been done again, but this particular effort doesn't make the grade. I'll start with the actors. Cedric The Entertainer does seem to be trying at times, and sometimes he comes across as a likable goof, but more often he comes across as loud-mouthed and abrasive. Lucy Liu has a thankless role as the woman who helps him, and Mark Dacascos is totally wasted as the villain, even though he does get to show off some martial arts (which are badly choreographed and directed.) But the main problem with the movie is the script and direction. The movie contains some blatant product plugs, several instances where the action comes to a halt to show off some "hilarious" comedy (such as the Dutch dance sequence), and an ending that does not know when to quit. And the outtakes shown at the end are even less funny than the scripted gags that preceded them!

While this by far the best comedy I've seen, it had it's moments.But that's not to say that it was bad.The worst part was in the mansion...the butler role was absolutely dreadful and unneeded.In fact the entire scene with the butler should have been cut and something else added in.Clearly the lead role was not written for Cedric...he seemed lost in it in many areas and just didn't fit quite right.Ronnie, however was a riot as the rapping custodian. His bathroom scene was just hilarious and possibly the best in the entire movie.**A little known fact is that Jake's house - the blue one was filed in a well known drug house in Vancouver, BC and had to be searched by police with dogs before filming began in the house.

Watching this movie, I kept thinking they couldn't afford to have a real script written, and must have run out of money when they were about 2/3 of the way through, and couldn't finish editing it. Not to mention, they probably couldn't afford Martin Lawrence for the lead role, so they filled it with Cedric the Entertainer, who does better in supporting roles. Cedric does have several funny scenes, though.The plot is completely unintelligible, and undeveloped, but based on the genre you can predict most of the action. It's the ever-popular "hero has something secret the bad guys want, so they can sell it to terrorists for a fortune, but it's missing." Not to mention, the scenes or "shticks" that have been better done elsewhere. For example, every time Cedric tried to be funny with judo moves, I kept thinking that he ripped that off from Martin, who does it much better. There is a brief cat-fight scene that is far inferior to the one in Undercover Brother (which is an excellent movie, and much funnier overall).

With perhaps any other contemporary actor in the lead role -- Jake Rodgers, aka, The Cleaner (Cedric the Entertainer) -- this film would have been a total bust. As some of the other folks commenting on here have already mentioned, the storyline is both contrived and in many ways superconventionally executed -- so much so that it risks becoming one long cliché. If you're looking for stimulating American cinema, or even a good action movie or espionage thriller, you should see something else.What saves CODE NAME: THE CLEANER for me, I think, is the utter preposterousness of casting Cedric the Entertainer as an amnesiac slowly convincing himself (and, supposedly, the viewer) that he is actually a secret agent working for the American government. I love Lucy Liu, but this is not her (best) film -- she plays more or less the same character she has played elsewhere (including the borderline racist trope that, since she is of Asian descent, she must be a masterful practitioner of at least one martial art) -- although her performance is true, and is enhanced comically by her playing opposite Cedric. None of the rest of the characters or actors -- including Nicollette Sheridan -- does much for the film, and the writing and direction are mediocre at best. But Cedric the Entertainer trying to convince us he's a superspy? That's worth the rental.