Kevin Smith is known for his subversive little low-budget comedies, mostly about immature young men who are obsessed with cultural trivia. And also every aspect of the sex act. And also drugs. So perhaps it's understandable that Smith didn't understand that, when he made his first big-budget studio film -- a buddy comedy called Cop Out -- it was supposed to feature guys who could somehow be taken for buddies, and that it should also be, at least in some respects, a comedy.
None of that is in Cop Out, though: This is a throwback to films like Beverly Hills Cop and Lethal Weapon, movies in which an explosive white guy and a funny brochure printing black guy solved crimes, traded quips, chased cars, broke laws and made billions at the box office. None of that in Cop Out either, I suspect.
The movie is a kind of homage. You can tell because in an early scene, Paul (30 Rock's Tracy Morgan) tells his partner Jimmy (Bruce Willis) that he wants to question their current suspect, and that he will do it by paying homage to old movies. He then quotes lines from several films SEmD Heat, Training Day, Star Wars, Schindler's List ---- to the baffled criminal, and don't worry if you don't get them all, because Jimmy sits outside the interrogation room and says, "Heat?," or "Schindler's List?," as the occasion requires. Paul also mispronounces "homage," which is, in a way, perfect.
There's a plot here, of sorts: Jimmy, who's divorced, doesn't have the money to pay for the wedding of his daughter, and if he can't, her stepfather (Jason Lee, playing the straight guy) will do so. This would be too much for Jimmy to bear, for some reason: It's difficult to tell, because Willis's distant performance doesn't allow for much in the way of acting. The actor appears to have signed up for Cop Out by mistake, and he compensates by falling back on the default Willis expression, the smirk, to convey a variety of emotions. You'd smirk too if you were being paid for this.
Breitling Replica WatchesAnyway, to pay for the wedding, Jimmy will have to sell his valuable mint Andy Pafko baseball card (Pafko was No. 1 in the 1952 Topps baseball set, so his card typically has rubber-band marks on it). But when the card is stolen, Jimmy and Paul have to track it down, which leads them to the local Mexican drug lord (Guillermo Diaz). As a matter of cultural trivia -- the kind of thing the old Kevin Smith would have done more with -- the movie tells us that Mexicans are now funnelling their drugs through Toronto, because it's an easier border to get through. Guess they haven't tried to take a bottle of water past Pearson airport security lately.
Smith has no idea how to stage any of this for laughs or excitement. He's best when he falls back on his old juvenilia: Seann William Scott steals the picture as a yappy burglar who tells knock-knock jokes and plays that game where he repeats everything you say at the same time that you say it. Scott's cockeyed grin of stupid mischief is the best thing about Cop Out. You have been warned.
-- Canwest News Service
Other Voices
Selected excerpts from reviews of Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis.
A movie that makes little sense, is dumb when it's not being stupid and yet is still at times laugh-out-loud funny.
-- Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
Definitely has its amusing moments, but ultimately all that improvised shtick gets mighty tired without any real break in the non-action.
-- Michael Rechtshaffen, Hollywood Reporter
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