I’m a fan of Kevin Smith’s body of work, a fan of 30 Rock and a fan of Bruce Willis. With the formula behind Cop Out, this should all add up to be a fine movie experience, right?
Right?
I’m a fan of Kevin Smith’s body of work, a fan of 30 Rock and a fan of Bruce Willis. With the formula behind Cop Out, this should all add up to be a fine movie experience, right?
Right?
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Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) have been partners for nine years. After a sting goes wrong and the two are suspended without pay, Jimmy is forced to sell a prized rare baseball card in order to pay for his daughter’s lavish wedding. After the card gets stolen, the two encounter a wild string of events as they try to recoup Jimmy’s most prized possession.
Now this is a film DIRECTED by Kevin Smith and written by the Cullen Brothers (CULLEN not COHEN), as opposed to written and directed by Kevin Smith. With that being said, there’s a clear difference between Smith’s other movies and this one. Sure, there are dick jokes and all, but it doesn’t have that View Askew feel to it. The promise of Kevin Smith directing a buddy cop film is you hoping that he will poke fun of the genre, much like Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz. Instead, you have a film that further falls into these tropes and somehow manages to set the genre back.
As far as the humor, there’s little to be found there. There will be moments where you’ll chuckle, sure, but most of the jokes are far too easy. We get it, Tracy Morgan sure is weird and Spanish folk sure do speak funny. Is that Tracy Morgan chasing criminals in a cell phone costume? HOW ZANY! A child who steals cars and curses people out? HOW ADORABLE! It’s all sort of tame and easy.
Both actors are pretty much set on cruise control in this film. Tracy Jordan – I’m sorry, Morgan — essentially does what he does every week on 30 Rock, which is fine in a half hour format but not so much during an entire feature. Bruce Willis just seems like he doesn’t want to be there, making for little chemistry between the two. The saving grace has to be Sean William Scott, who steals every scene he is in. His interactions with Tracy Morgan make for the best (if only) highlights of this film. Sadly, he has little to no screen time, leaving the rest of the movie dejected and dragging.
Overall Score: 4.05 – Terrible. (4s are terrible in many ways. They’re bad enough that even diehard fans of its genre, director, or cast still probably won’t enjoy it at all, and everyone else will leave the theater incredibly angry. Not only are these not worth renting, you should even change the TV channel on them in the future.)
It’s sad that this didn’t work out. Back when it was called “A Couple of Dicks” I was excited to see Kevin Smith’s take on the genre. Sadly, it turned out to be a lackluster movie that just fell into the tropes of the genre. With tame jokes and no chemistry, if anything it’s a showcase for Sean William Scott.
Andrew Kauz:
Overall Score: 4.30 — Remember how great buddy cop movies were? If you value those memories at all, don't see Cop Out, which does almost nothing to successfully pay tribute to the great buddy cop films of the past thirty years. It's also just a bad film. You can read his full review here!
