John's Take: 'Cop Out'

The buddy cop comedy has been a staple at the movies since the early 80’s with at least one movie of this type appearing every year. Their popularity is unmatched with most usually headlining as a summer tent pole for its studio. This isn’t to say they are all good…the fact is the majority are average at best but that doesn’t stop them from making a ton of money and usually being at least a little fun to watch. So in comes ‘Cop Out’ a buddy cop movie which at first glance doesn’t look any different than the rest, but the studios had a curve ball for us…they made Kevin Smith the director! ‘Cop Out’ follows two veteran detectives, Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracey Morgan), on a hunt to track down a stolen baseball card. Jimmy is divorced and his daughter, Ava played by Michelle Trachtenberg, is getting married, naturally the stepdad is rich and kind of a douche who offers, not so gracefully I might add, to pay for Ava’s elaborate wedding. In order to save face and still give his daughter the wedding of her dreams Jimmy decides he’ll sell a vintage baseball card he owns that’s worth $80,000. Sounds easy, right? Not so much, when Jimmy is at the card shop to finalize the sale the store is robbed and Jimmy’s card is stolen with Jimmy’s partner Paul standing right outside. Paul is a loveable and goofy guy…if only he knew for sure if his wife was cheating on him or not! As the two partners follow the leads to find the robbers and recover the card they embark down a road that leads them right into the center of a drug smuggling gang and the wife of a dead Mexican drug kingpin. All this for a piece of 4X6 cardboard? So is ‘Cop Out’ more of the same, or does it offer something new to the buddy cop genre?

Nope, nothing new here, actually one could even say that they went to extraordinary lengths to recreate the feel of many of it’s predecessors. The film is funny, really funny actually. I expected from the trailers to be eye rolling at least half of the movie but I was too busy bent over in laughter to roll my eyes. The strangest part is that the bits I loathed from the trailer were some of the funniest when they played out in full on screen. Tracey Morgan really turned my opinon on his ability to be funny, he steals the show and is the real star of this movie. It’s a huge plus that he was able to pull this off as the entire movie hinged on his performance, he has A LOT of screen time and this flick is definitely more comedy than action (as opposed to something like Lethal Weapon). He’s not only funny but somewhat endearing in the scenes he shares with Rashida Jones who plays his wife. Bruce Willis does what he does best, kicks some ass and makes some jokes all the while making it look cool as ice. Another big surprise in the movie for me was Sean William Scott, who plays a parkour practicing thief. He really added to the scenes he was in and made the most of his small amount of screen time. Kevin Smith has been adamant about the fact that he didn’t write this film but I’m not buying it. While he may not have actually written the script initially his fingerprints are ALL over this movie. From Star Wars quotes to the toilet humor we know him best for this is definitely a Kevin Smith film. No, it’s not talky and there’s some major action scenes but this feels like Smith, and that’s a huge compliment. One of the things I’ve always loved about Smith is his ability to pick the perfect music for a scene, ‘Clerks 2’ is a great example, his musical selection is out in full form this time around with a really slick mix up of old school rap and 80’s synthesized back tracks that really make you feel like you’re watching this film in the heyday of the buddy cop era, the music hits on all marks and thouroughly adds to the enjoyment of the film. So sounds like ‘Cop Out’ is the perfect cop comedy right? Well, not quite.

Far from perfect this movie is lacking in several departments. The story for one is very basic and shallow, supporting and using every cliché from the genre possible…hell it even steals clichés from other genres at times. I spoke a lot about how funny the movie was and I wasn’t exaggerating but there’s so many jokes in the movie that there’s plenty of room for jokes that fall flat, and they certainly use that room. Every movie has its stars and they can certainly make a movie great, but the devil is in the details my friends and if you have a great hero but a crappy villain than you only have half of the equation now, don’t you? The bad guy in this flick is horrible, I mean really bad. Not only is he a stereotype of Mexican bad guys in general, he’s not even really fleshed out enough to give those stereotypes justice. I don’t know if it was the actor, the direction, or the writing, but he ended up coming off about 2 IQ points north of Forrest Gump, yet were supposed to believe that he runs an evil underground empire. There’s also some unnecessary plotlines that seem like they were just part of some ‘Buddy Cop Movie Checklist’ and were put in because someone felt the must complete that list. Mainly this is the “cop has trust issues with the wife” storyline between Tracey Morgan and Rashida Jones, and the “Other two cops who are partners and douchebags” starring Adam Brody and Kevin Pollack (what a waste!). The ending is really kind of lacking, the action scenes are not very intense, and there are other storylines that aren’t fleshed out at all, particularly between Paul and Gabriela, the dead drug lord’s lady. So with all this bad stuff….is it worth seeing?

A resounding YES from my department, for a stomach ache inducing laugh session this is the movie to see. Even in its faults the movie does well, as it takes these missteps with almost a self referential wink telling you “Yeah we know this is in every movie….that’s why we’re doing it” This flick is way more Riggs and Murtaugh than Sam Jackson and Eugene Levy (stars of ‘The Man’, I couldn’t really expect you to get that reference as it’s to a movie so bad that I don’t even think 8 people didn’t want their money back afterwards). Kevin Smith proves that although he may not be able to shoot the most amazing action scene he is more than capable of making a decent studio movie better. This being the first movie he directed that he didn’t write let’s hope that it has some success so that he’ll keep directing other projects than his own. It’s not that I don’t like the stuff he writes, I love it! I just wish we could see a Kevin Smith movie more than once every 4 years. To make a long story just a little bit longer go see ‘Cop Out’ in theaters and have a good laugh, I know we all need one and if something comes up and you can’t catch this one in theaters be SURE to see it when it’s out on rental.

RATING:

4 out of 5 Guttenberg's