Wrong Cops

Quentin Dupieux's films are not for everyone, but if you're looking for a very fun, absurdist film you're going to love Wrong Cops.

I can't understand why other reviewers hate on this film so much. I watched it and laughed my ass off and had a great time. It's my favorite film of the past year. It's deadpan absurdity, a sequence of slightly the surreal encounters of a police force that does more harm than good, who spend their time selling drugs, refusing to investigate crimes, and composing house music. Dupieux's films collectively are like a breath of fresh air in a stodgy and self-important film culture.

The plot of Wrong Cops is loose and it almost feels like a piece written for the stage. It's all about the slightly twisted encounters - from scene to scene there is no way to predict where the film will take you, and once it takes you there there's no way to know exactly where you are. This kind of mischievous disorientation can be very fun if you just let go and take the ride.

If you like David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, etc. - films that go over the top with their surrealism and absurdity, films that never feel quite comfortable and familiar yet which you can't look away from, you will love this film. If you're looking for standard fare, just don't watch it. It will probably make you angry.

"This stinks of Germany!," hollers Duke (Mark Burnham), a pudgy, crooked cop, who is one of the many characters in Quentin Dupieux's latest film Wrong Cops. The context involves a shady figure named David Delores Frank (Marilyn Manson) giving Duke a taste of the new-age, Dubstep-esque kind of music the kids are listening to today. The scene is an accurate summation of everything Wrong Cops includes - quirky characters, inane little vignettes, random bits of humor, comedic laxness, and bumping house music housed inside a seventy-eight minute runtime.

This is Dupieux's third feature, his first being the widely-scene sleeper-hit Rubber, involving a killer tire, Wrong, a damning film about a man who wanders into the strangest of circumstances while trying to find his lost dog, and now Wrong Cops, the sorta-kinda followup to his last endeavor. The film continues the line of absurdist, surreal comedy, which is really hit and miss in the long run. However, Wrong Cops has probably more hits than any of Dupieux's previous features. Rubber was great fun for about fifty minutes - the problem was it was eighty minutes long - and Wrong felt like a screen writing exercise involving vapid characters and asinine circumstances clobbered together.

Wrong Cops, similar to Wrong in several ways, flies by the seat of its pants, possessing a vague plot that can be summarized in a sentence and includes numerous vignettes on its many characters. The plotlessness helps Dupieux communicate every cockamamie thing he wants to in a relatively short amount of time, so calling the film a burden on somebody's behalf is quite the overstatement. The story revolves around a band of bumbling cops who accidentally shoot an innocent person and must dispose of his body. Now that the plot is out of the way, the story largely focuses on the antics involving Duke, a hilariously vulgar officer who deals bags of marijuana in secrecy by handing the customer the product inside a dead rat to avoid drawing attention. Duke, however, is at kind of a loss, trying to retrieve money from a customer (Steve Little) who continues to buy more and more marijuana without having the money. Another noteworthy character is Renato (Eric Wareheim), a dopey cop who barely gets by when he's left to his own wit. The only cop who seems to have sense is Shirley (Arden Myrin), who works closely with Duke.

To begin with, the film feels like a series of fifteen minute long skits fit for the lineup of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, strung together in a halfway coherent seventy-eight minute film. The spontaneity and unpredictability of this project can be commended as a rather risky effort by Dupieux but the result feels somewhat incomplete and lacking seeing as there really is no continuity in the film whatsoever. Furthermore, the anti-humor schtick is still wonky, once again leaving me at a point of confusion, as I don't know what the humor is trying to be other than as weird as can be because, as far as I can tell, the entire movement doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

Wrong Cops, however, is entertaining, albeit disjointed. Aside from the style of humor and situational weirdness that was clearly present in Wrong, the same goes for the easy-on-the-eyes, washed out cinematography, whose color-scheme consists of faded yellow, sky blue, and plain white to make for an always beautiful look. Quentin Dupieux is easily one of the damnedest new filmmakers, and I technically haven't really liked one of his films yet, but his style, efforts to blend contemporary surrealism with comedy, along with persistency into throwing characters and plots together for "no reason" begs to be explored, for it seems genuinely fresh and unique in an age where so much isn't.

Starring: Mark Burnham, Steve Little, Marilyn Manson, Éric Judor, Eric Wareheim, and Arden Myrin. Directed by: Quentin Dupieux.

The movie is cauterizing the society we live in, using extreme and laughable characters and stories. A society where someone only cares of what he is personally experiences,his meaningless dreams, or the short term pleasures, the perverted fantasies, and the power abuse and curruption people are willing to use to archieve those. Wrapped up with the stupudity of their characters.

There's no plot to "Wrong Cops." It... just sort of unfolds, like a flower blooming, then withering, then rotting.

The official synopsis claims that "Wrong Cops" is set in a future where crime has been eradicated —but you'd never know this was "SF" by watching this film cold. "Wrong" looks like it was shot during a sunny day in New Jersey or someplace.

Due to this lack of structure, "Wrong" has a anemic, listless, aimless feel, which makes viewing tedious at times. Overall, however, the lack of structure (or maybe the structure I'm not picking up on) adds to the absurdity of the comedy, making it truly funny in places. Additionally, an otherworldly soundtrack of messy, electronic beats strings the movie together, giving it its own identity. I love the music. It makes this movie feel like it's set in another dimension. One character comments on it, suggesting that they may be in Hell: "We have invisible flames around us. You can't see them, but we all have invisible flames around us."

Marilyn Manson has a small role as a maligned high school kid and he's very funny. I've always respected him after watching his insightful interview on "Bowling for Columbine," and he seems like a cool guy, someone who doesn't take himself too seriously. That's the attitude of this film, too. You just laugh at the oddness of it all, and don't get annoyed or angry when the plot doesn't make sense. I've seen other user reviews refer to this as a movie for weed-smokers. I don't smoke pot, but I can see this as perfect pothead theatre.

Parts of the movie that drag tend to be scenes with Eric Wareheim and Arden Myrin. I don't know them from other work—both are comedians, apparently—but the scenes with them (especially Wareheim) kind of suck. Wareheim getting sprayed with pepper spray was slooooow and his comedy mannerisms seem to be him just over enunciating "n" and "t" sounds, like he's doing a cruel impression of a severely autistic adolescent. Props to Mark Burnham, however. He's got real charisma as the bullheaded lead, and the guy playing "Sunshine" looks a lot like Edward Norton. That's funny to me, somehow.

Recommended.

I'm gonna keep it brief.

I got high, watched this and laughed. I laughed at its weird, incoherent plot line and it's weird, strange characters that did weird, crude things. The review before this mentions a "stilted dialogue" which I think is an accurate description...but in a good way.

This is a very niche sort of humour - not for everyone granted. I'm not comparing it to Freddie Got Fingered, but if you're the type who 'got' that film, you'll understand this one - which I suppose is not reading into too much into it and just effin' laugh at it instead.

The cinematography was definitely a plus as well. Not groundbreaking, but actually well considered for this type of film.

All in all, its not to be taken seriously. This is someone just simply playing around and having fun.