Right up there with “pull my finger”, Cop Out is a bit like one of those silly “wouldn’t it be funny if…?” remarks you joke about with your mate. It’s amusing at the time, but you never actually act on the idea because, well, that’d be stupid. Director Kevin Smith, however, has made a career out of elaborating on stupid ideas. His films Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back and Zack and Miri Make a Porno aren’t exactly high brow comedies, yet that’s precisely why people tend to like them. They pander to the fowl-mouthed toddler inside all of us; the slow, dopey part of our brain that needs a tickle every once in a while.
In Cop Out, however, those tickles are in short supply. Smith, who has been recycling the same material for the last decade, is quickly becoming a cliché of himself. Some of the jokes in his latest are so far beyond the realms of lame, you have to wonder whether it’s intentional.
If the cheesy Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack doesn’t give it away, Cop Out serves as a homage to the corny police procedural movies and TV shows of the 80s. Nearly all of the parodies the movie has to offer are unloaded in the first scene, where officer Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan of TV’s 30 Rock) interrogates a suspect by blurting-out famous movie quotes. At least, that’s what his long-time partner Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) says he’s doing. I’ve never been able to understand Tracy Morgan at the best of times, but here, his yelling is incomprehensible. EITHER ALL HIS DIALOGUE HAS BEEN WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS, or Morgan has yet to develop an inside voice.
Anyhow, back to the plot; Jimmy and Paul lose their badges after royally stuffing up an undercover sting, but that doesn’t stop them from enforcing the law on their own terms. Jimmy, in desperate need of cash to pay for his daughter’s wedding, embarks on a personal vendetta to recover a highly valuable baseball card stolen from him by a petty thief named Dave (Seann William Scott). The problem is that he’s sold it on to a Mexican drug dealer named Po’ Boy (Guillermo Diaz) who would kill, quite literally, to get his hands on a particularly important Mercedes Benz.
All of this is chaotically patched together by screenwriters Mark and Rob Cullen, who are constantly presented with opportunities to parody buddy-cop movies, yet choose to fall back on another limp joke about bodily functions instead. At least there’s some decent action, right? Nope, there’s no explosive finale here, just 90 minutes of offensive and unfunny smack talk.
So why would Bruce Willis sign on to something like this? Simple; he has been paid to stand around and do nothing but raise the film’s profile. While he barely says a word, Morgan doesn’t shut up. Nearly every joke is his responsibility, sans for a few scenes featuring Seann William Scott and his typically crude wit. Eleven years since American Pie and he’s still stuck playing Stifler. Perhaps he simply enjoys it?
It seems as though he does, which is the main reason why it’s hard to truly loathe Cop Out; everyone involved looks to be having an absolute ball. I only wish I could say the same. I guess it’s one of those “you had to be there” moments.
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