(Long Island, N.Y.) Whee, another Kevin Smith film. Can you tell how genuinely excited I am? Honestly, I think I’ve given up all hope that writer/director Smith will ever turn out another decent film. By “another decent film,” I do admit that his 1994 indie premiere Clerks was pretty good, but since then he’s just released stinker after stinker and I just can’t
take it anymore.
The fact that the films Smith has made occasionally contain flashes of good wit or humor previously tricked me into believing that Smith was actually some kind of Idiot Savant. Thus, I was prompted to write the following quote about him at the end of my review for his 2008 film Zack and Miri Make a Porno, the closest he’s come in years to making something semi-watchable: “I suppose if I didn’t feel that he truly possessed some undeniable talent buried deep down, I wouldn’t care that he keeps churning out so many bad movies. But the fact of the matter is that the man IS talented, but you only manage to see glimpses of that talent in each flick he creates.”
Anyway, I take that back. I’m through waiting for the guy to get better. Onward…
So, today’s I’m reviewing Cop Out (formally called “A Couple of Dicks,” referring to the fact that the two main characters are detectives, but the studio thought that was too dirty-sounding, so…), a cop buddy comedy film starring Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan playing the same roles you’ve seen different actors do 10.000 times before. To call this movie a re-hash of every movie where you’ve seen an inept fool team-up with a tough-guy to take down the Mafia or a gang or terrorists or whatever would be…well, the truth. But regardless of Cop Out’s astonishing lack of originality, I’ll cover the plot quickly for you anyway.
Jimmy and Paul (Willis and Morgan) are two police detectives that have been partners for 9 years. As per the norm in this type of movie, Jimmy is a hard, no-nonsense type that kills the bad guys and gets the job done, while Paul is a numbskull who is wacky, basically incompetent, and probably should have been killed in the line of duty years ago. Tracking down the head of a local drug ring, Jimmy and Paul are on the verge of cracking a major case. But of course, the bust goes sour and their informant killed, landing them in hot water with the Stupid Chief who (surprise!) takes away their badges and guns! When does THAT ever happen in a movie (besides all the time)?
In addition to that misfortune, Jimmy is then robbed of a valuable baseball card that he was planning to sell to pay for his daughter’s $50,000 wedding (this is funny- when Jimmy is suspended for a month without pay, he whines to the Stupid Chief that he’s broke needed the money to pay for the wedding- he makes $50,000 a month? Wow, police work pays better than I thought!). Tracking down the card thief (Sean William Scott, who supplied probably the only genuinely amusing performance of the entire movie), we discover that he sold the pricy piece of sports memorabilia to the very drug lord Jimmy and Paul were trying to take down when they got suspended! Can you believe the coincidence? So, the two irreverent cops, despite being suspended and legally possessing none of their law-enforcing powers, nonetheless decide to take down the dealer and get Jimmy’s card back. There’s a little more to Cop Out than that, but I’ll leave it to you to find out if you actually choose to subject yourself to it.
Cop Out was pretty much the equivalent of the wet puddle you’d typically find in the bottom of a fast food restaurant’s garbage dumpster. It had some legit laughs here and there- sure, I can fully admit that- but it got worse and worse as it went on and was almost totally unwatchable by the end. Bruce Willis was, as usual, Bruce Willis (when is he not?), and while
Tracy Morgan was amusing at first, his ultra-stereotypical crazy bumbling sidekick character got old after the first 10 minutes. You literally could have substituted him with any other comedian in history and the result would have been exactly the same.
And while Kevin
Smith is responsible for directing Cop Out (shame, shame), at least he didn’t write this bomb, which means it thankfully didn’t turn all sentimental and sappy and completely lose it’s edge halfway through (like in every flick that he’s scripted himself). Sadly, someone who’s even a worse writer than Smith penned this heap (brothers Mark and Robb Cullen), and it’s actually given me some (a little) begrudging respect for Kevin’s abilities in this regard. The humor in Cop Out is painfully by-the-numbers and bad, the pacing is uneven, and the plot borders on being a live-action cartoon in terms of logic and character interaction. But regardless of who wrote this travesty, the usual Kevin Smith trademark of awkwardly forcing his favorite music in a scene, no matter how ill-fitting, was here in force; having seen quite a few Smith films (save me!), I think it’s safe to say that I’ve never seen a guy with such undying love for 1980’s rap music and cheesy power-ballads before.
BTW, Smith has no idea how to direct actions scenes at all. Every fight or gun battle was slow, awkward, clumsy, and featured camerawork that really appears to have no interest at all in focusing on who’s shooting at what or where. There’s a scene where a house full of assailants open fire on our heroes and there’s a tight close-up of Bruce Willis, edging along the side of the building and shooting at…something. I don’t know what, since all the bad guys were firing out of the front windows. Needless to say (but I will, anyway), my 12 year-old nephew has filmed movies with action scenes that flow better.
So, yeah, the new Kevin Smith movie isn’t good. BIG surprise.
