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Kevin Smith is one of my favorite modern filmmakers, but everyone makes mistakes and Smith's latest is COP OUT. I really wanted to enjoy this movie. Unfortunately, the movie was so mediocre that I found my attention wandering through most of it. The film, Smith's attempt at recreating the fun of 80's buddy cop films, stars Bruce Willis and Tracey Morgan as two disgraced cops who are suspended after a botched stake-out. The timing couldn't be worse, as Jimmy (Willis) is trying to pay for his daughter's wedding. He decides to sell off a rare baseball card to raise the funds, but a robbery relieves him of the card before he can. Jimmy and his long-time partner Paul (Morgan) set out to track down the baseball card and find themselves in the middle of a case to bring down a local drug lord who hopes to expand his business.

See, it even sounds like an 80s buddy cop movie!! The problem here is that the film isn't funny enough to be a full comedy, and the action isn't strong enough to be a decent action film. So it just sits in the middle, failing to appease people who watched it for either reason. Smith has created some of my favorite comedies (DOGMA was awesome, and JAY & SILENT BOB STRIKE BACK is one of my guilty pleasures), but those were films he'd written and directed. Here, the writing duties had been given to Robb and Mark Cullen. I've never seen anything written by the Cullens and, thanks to COP OUT, I'm not in any real rush to do so. Smith's trademark borderline-juvenile comedy that usually has me laughing so hard I can't breathe is pretty much gone (though he does manage to toss in his obligatory STAR WARS reference) and replaced by cringe-worthy low(er) brow toilet humor.

The problem isn't just with the writing and weak action sequences, it's with the casting. I love Willis but he doesn't really seem to get much to work with, and for most of the movie he comes off as bored. Morgan was all right back in the day on SNL and he's pretty good on 30 ROCK, but he grinds on my nerves here. He has a few funny moments, but you need more than a few when you're helping carry an entire feature. The worst bit of casting came in the form of Guillermo Diaz as Poh Boy, the drug lord villain. Maybe it's because I can only remember him as Scarface from HALF-BAKED but I couldn't take any of his bad guy schtick seriously. Sean William Scott has the only real funny role in the movie as the S**t Bandit (so named because the cops spy him using the bathroom in the middle of a burglary). Scott earns the most laughs with his eccentric, childish games eating away at Paul's nerves.

I don't consider COP OUT a bad movie, because it's not so terribly done that I can't watch it. It has a couple fun moments but they're not enough to save the movie. The film never rises above mediocre and I hope this serves as a lesson to Smith that he should continue to write his own movies. I'm sure if he had put this together himself, it would've been light years better and we'd be applauding Smith for trying a new genre instead of wishing he hadn't.

After a clumsy operation trying to capture a drug dealer, the N.Y.P.D Detectives Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are suspended for one month by their Captain Romans (Sean Cullen). Jimmy decides to sell his rare baseball card to pay the expensive wedding of his daughter while his jealous partner believes that his wife is cheating him with their next-door neighbor. When Jimmy is selling his card to a memorabilia store, the place is stolen by two smalltime thieves and the detective loses his card. They track down the thieves and discover that he exchanged the card per drugs with the powerful drug lord Poh Boy (Guilermo Diaz). Jimmy and Paul seek out the gangster that proposes to trade the card per his car that had been carjacked. The detectives find the car but when they open the truck, they have a huge surprise.

"Cop Out" is a film that uses the old formula of combination of action and comedy that usually works. Kevin Smith is no longer that bold independent director from "Clerks" or "Chasing Amy" and follows the easy way of Hollywood making a conventional film, supported by the chemistry between Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan. The story is entertaining and predictable. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Tiras em Apuros" ("Cops in Trouble")

I guess you could call a few scenes mildly amusing but this movie never delivered any laugh out loud moments. It certainly never rings true as an action film. I don't know if they were mocking or paying homage to movies like Lethal Weapon and that's precisely the problem. Bruce Willis was solid but Tracy Morgan was severely out of place. While I find Morgan funny, his act wears thin fast. Also, Kevin Smith experimenting with the hand-held shaky camera craze has to be considered a colossal failure. Maybe it wasn't even intentional but I had to look away from the screen on some simple shots because of the motion. What was he thinking? Doesn't anyone screen the final cut and let him know what was wrong?

Cop Out has a few laughs, but otherwise it's a surprisingly bland experience. It suffers from a generic storyline, questionable performances and the simple fact that almost none of the intended sources of humour achieve the desired effect.

Bruce Willis (an old timer) and Tracy Morgan (a new timer) are an odd couple indeed, but they had potential. The problem is that their levels of commitment to the film are polarized. Willis seems lazy and uninterested never putting much effort into it. Morgan on the other hand, tries way too hard. His larger than life style of crudeness is more clumsy than funny, and he upstages pretty much everyone else in the cast.

After about ten minutes, we have a pretty good idea of how this film is gonna play out, but we go with it in the hope that the trip is worth while. Unfortunately there are more silly contrivances and poorly written lines than there are laughs. The only time when Cop Out is funny (and remotely clever) is over a Good Cop Bad Cop routine that Willis and Morgan have. There are enough action movie jokes to make it clear to the audience that at least Kevin Smith has the self-awareness necessary for satire. But from what I saw, Cop Out isn't really a satire at all. It no better or worse than any other failed cop/comedy. I'm not sure if it's laziness or lack of thinking behind it, but Cop Out hasn't got the goods

There are so many films within this genre, plus a whole host on TV, that the risk of making it is that we have all seen it before. There is inevitably a touch of that in this film, but it does have some solid acting by all the main characters to give it some impetus at crucial times.

Cop Bruce Willis must raise face saving money for his daughter's wedding and he has worked out a legal way of doing so. From there we have a carefully interwoven sequence of events that lead us through the story to an ending not quite what you may expect.

It is enjoyable, funny in places, doesn't take itself too seriously, and whisks you through a couple of hours. Not everyone's cup of tea given the competition but still an okay film. Six out of ten.