Let me state up front that I am a fan of Kevin Smith movies. With the exception of one (ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO) I’ve found his films to be interesting, controversial, entertaining and enjoyable. Now we have two in a row that fall into the category of movies to avoid at all costs. And while I wasn’t a fan of ZACK AND MIRI, I’d watch it again before watching COP OUT.
COP OUT is basically the formula buddy cop movie. Bruce Willis plays Jimmy Monroe, the stoic more serious member of the duo. Tracy Morgan plays Paul Hodges, the loud mouthed humorous one (or at least he’s supposed to be) who talks non-stop whenever the camera hits him. The film opens with the duo interrogating a suspect who they then turn into a snitch.
Morgan and Willis go on stake out with Morgan in a cell phone suit standing on the sidewalk in front of a store the man works in while they wait for his contact, a drug dealer and supplier. Spotted, the dealer shoots the snitch and gets away but not before Morgan steals a kids bicycle to chase him down and Willis gets slightly hit by a car as the bad guy gets away. In turn for their heroic efforts (and due to the footage of Morgan stealing the bike appearing on youtube), the pair are put on suspension for 30 days.
This is a problem for Willis whose daughter is about to get married and whose marriage runs a tab of just over $48,000. Step dad Roy (Jason Lee) volunteers to pay but that’s all due to a one upsmanship contest between dad and step dad. To pay for the wedding, Willis decides to part with a rare baseball card he’s had for years worth $82,000. But while passing it to a dealer in his store, the place is held up and the card loss. Now the pair goes on a hunt for the thieves who took the card.
The drug dealers are still out and about as well. When the drug lord Poh Boy’s Mercedes is stolen, he kills the man responsible for handling the car and offers a bounty for anyone who finds it. What are the odds that these two divergent paths will cross somewhere down the line. Sure they will.
Picking up the thief who stole the card, Willis and Morgan end up confronting Poh Boy, an avid collector who has the card now. He offers to give them the card if they locate his Mercedes. But there’s something special in the Mercedes that the two police detectives come across.
The film tries far too hard for laughs and ends up delivering none. The funniest moments we see here are the ones we all were able to see in the trailer for this film and even those aren’t all that funny. And while Sean William Scott got quite a bit of screen time in that trailer, his part here is minor.
The entire time I was watching this movie I found myself wanting to push the fast forward button to get to a part where something happens. I kept wondering is this supposed to be a comedy because I haven’t laughed once. Then I thought is it a cop movie, but the plot was so thin that I didn’t think it was that either. So it must have been a buddy cop film…except that there was absolutely no chemistry between Morgan and Willis. This is odd because Willis seems to find chemistry with almost any actor.
Director Smith is noted for his dialogue in his films. But since this is his first movie where he wasn’t responsible for the script I guess I can’t blame him for the lame dialogue here. Nor can I blame him for the slapdash story that never gets the viewer involved or interested. I found myself not even caring about a side story of Morgan thinking his wife was cheating on him and his paranoia about it.
In the film STARDUST MEMORIES, Woody Allen played a film director of comedies who makes a serious film that no one likes. Aliens descend to Earth and talk to him telling him he should stick to comedies. The same is true of Kevin Smith. He should stick to movies that he writes. Or at least find better material to work with because COP OUT is a movie I know I will never watch again. Given the choice between this and the Weather Channel, I’ll be looking to see how the heat wave is this summer.
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