Cop Out

When reviewing movies I always like to highlight as many positive things about them as I can. A film is a huge collaborative effort, representing the hard work of hundreds of talented people. It’s easy to sit back and pick apart a movie, but I always try to keep the perspective that getting a film made is a huge achievement. Since I’ve never made a full-length feature film myself, I try not to be overly judgmental. Having said that, I’m sad to report that I can find very few positive things to say about Cop Out, the new film directed by Kevin Smith (from a script by Robb and Mark Cullen), the mystifyingly popular writer/director of the “Viewaskewaverse” movies: Clerks I & II, Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Cop Out begins with Jimmy (Bruce Willis) and Paul (Tracy Morgan), two New York cops, interrogating a suspect. Paul launches into a tirade that consists of quoting lines from various (mostly) cop/crime movies ranging from Scarface to Training Day to (quelle surprise) Die Hard. Okay. I get it. Cop Out is an hommage to the classic buddy cop movies of yesteryear, movies like Lethal Weapon, Tango & Cash, Beverly Hills Cop and 48 Hours, and the entire opening sequence is meant to illustrate that fact. And in case you missed it, Paul explains to his partner that his overuse of movie quotations is a “homage” (pronouncing it hamij) to those movies. Unfortunately, this sequence is entirely nonsensical and completely unfunny. It’s poorly acted and sloppily edited which made it difficult to watch. I wasn’t five minutes into the film before I started wondering if I would have to endure this kind of pointless gibberish for the duration.

Later, Jimmy and Paul are suspended without pay for botching another team’s investigation. Unfortunately for Jimmy, his daughter’s wedding is approaching, and he desperately needs the money to pay for the nuptials. When Jimmy goes to sell a prized baseball card worth 80K, the sports memorabilia shop is robbed and the card is stolen by a crazy parkour practitioner, Dave, who possibly has some form of tourette syndrome. Well, he can’t seem to keep his mouth shut at any rate. Dave is played by Seann William Scott, and I can honestly say that his performance is the only thing in Cop Out that even barely made me crack a smile. Barely. Though I must give props to whomever it was who came up with the idea to have Tracy Morgan use the word “nincompoop” in the movie. Not enough usage of “nincompoop” these days, I say. Bravo.

When Jimmy and Paul catch up with Dave, they learn that he has sold the baseball card to a minor drug kingpin named Poh Boy. Jimmy is determined to do whatever it takes to get the card back as he is adamant to a near-tragic fault that he will pay for his daughter’s wedding rather that his ex-wife’s well-to-do husband, Roy (Jason Lee). There’s a needless subplot regarding whether Paul’s wife is cheating on him or not; I guess it only serves to make Paul more layered as a character. It really doesn’t work, though, due to the fact that Tracy Morgan is a blathering moron for the whole 100 minutes. I don’t care anything about him, and if his wife is cheating on him, it’s probably the result of his continuous stupidity. Honestly, it’s unfathomable how any woman would marry the character to begin with.

To further drive home the fact that Cop Out is a love-letter to the buddy cop genre, the entire soundtrack consists of cheesy, 80’s-style synthesizer music, a la Axel F (though not nearly as catchy). In fact, I just looked it up, and the music was composed (and I use the term loosely) by Harold Faltermeyer, the same composer who wrote Axel F. In my opinion, scoring the movie in this style only serves to detract from an already poorly constructed film.

Here’s my thing. There’s nothing smart or remotely funny about Cop Out. It’s nothing more than a haphazardly thrown together story that’s not based on any kind of feasibility. The actors are not so much directed by Smith as they are let loose to act like slobbering maniacs who give no thought to motivation or comedic timing. It’s just one big mess. And do I really need a buddy cop hommage flick? If I want to watch a good buddy picture I’ll turn to the hundreds of great films that have already done the job well, are exponentially funnier and have stood the test of time. I would have much rather spent the time watching Lethal Weapon again, or Rush Hour. In fact, Simon Pegg’s Hot Fuzz comes to mind as a movie that paid mad homage to the buddy cop genre and did it extremely well to boot.

I read recently that Kevin Smith took the job to direct Cop Out to prove to himself that he could direct something other than a Kevin Smith film. If Cop Out is any indication, I’d say that he can’t. I also noticed that Smith insisted on editing this movie himself, and I even read that he balked when the studio suggested bringing in an editor to assist with final cut. I think that might have been a big mistake as far as this movie is concerned. Cop Out is one of the most poorly edited films I’ve seen in a long time.

I used to follow Kevin Smith on Twitter. I stopped following him because I began to realize that he’s someone who has absolutely no internal censor. There are a lot of people who seem to be interested in his incessant, perverted ramblings, but I’m not really one of them. It seems that Kevin Smith has spent more time building an army of mindless sycophants than he has honing his craft.

If movies that lack any real humor, style, story or entertainment value are your thing, then, by all means, feel free to waste your valuable time and hard-earned money on the utter disaster that is Cop Out. I’ll watch just about anything on DVD, but I’m here to warn you: don’t pay full-price, don’t pay matinee price, don’t rent it. It’s not worth your time. But even as I write this I know that there will be some people who will enjoy it, like the two cackling women in the row behind me who seemed to think that Tracy Morgan was hilarious in this. But then again, when I turned around to get a look at them I saw that they weren’t women at all but a pair of screaming pack llamas wearing earrings and lipstick. So, really, who cares what they think?

by Stuart Benedict