Les nouveaux associés

This is a truly funny film that the whole family can watch, and enjoy. Amazing! Mom cooks enough food for a White House reception, the kids are mostly normal except the youngest, who is channeling Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and Dad can't get a bagel without cream cheese on it. The cops are standard film cops except that Jack Palance is even more overpowering than usual. His best line (you have to be there) is "Never throw a cat at me again." He never yells, although he has plentiful provocation. This is refreshing; we laughed through the whole movie.

Norman Robberson (Chevy Chase) is a typical husband and father who lives in the idyllic suburb of Pleasant Valley with his wife Helen (Dianne Wiest) and three kids with young vampire obcessed Billy (Miko Hughes), delinquent middle son Kevin (Jason James Richtor), and teenage daughter Cindy (Fay Masterson). While Norman goes to his mundane office job everyday, Norman often fantasizes about being a cop and has an encyclopedic knowledge of all the cop shows catching them in re-runs and renting episodes from video stores. When the police department learns notorious and violent counterfeiter Horace Osborn (Robert Davi) is hiding out in Pleasant Valley, the department sends gizzled veteran cop Jake Stone (Jack Palance) and his young partner Tony Moore (David Barry Gray) to stakeout the area using Robberson's home as the surveillance point. Norman is excited for the opportunity to get in on the action, but Stone finds himself irritated by Norman's antics.

Cops and Robbersons is a 1994 comedy vehicle for Chevy Chase that was one of the more "family skewing" roles the comedian took in the 90s as Chase's previous films such as Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Nothing but Trouble were underperformers and the market started favoring broader more family orientated comedies popularized by the works of Chris Columbus and John Hughes. Released in April of 1994, the film opened in an unexceptional second place behind sleeper hit Four Weddings and a Funeral in its sixth weekend and eventually closed out its run with $11 million making it financial disappointment. Critical reception was dismal with many making unfavorable comparisons to the film Stakeout and also making unfavorable comparisons between Chase's Norman Robberson and his Clark Griswold character. Cops and Robbersons is the kind of movie where it feels like they started with the title and then crudely tried to build a movie around it.

The movie is comparable to other broad police comedies of the time such as Stakeout, but is more targeted to the same audience that made Kindergarten Cop and to a lesser extent Cop and a Half successful. Cops and Robbersons is better than Cop and a Half by virtue of having better performances and a seemingly smoother production, but it's rather lacking when compared to Kindergarten Cop Chevy Chase is a funhouse mirror exaggeration of his Clark Griswold character as he plays Norm Robberson as so massively thickheaded you wonder how he's able to hold down a job or keep a roof over his head due to his multitude of idiot decisions that are divorced from reality. Chase is always at his best playing characters who fit his wiseass persona such as how Clark Griswold is properly written in Vacation and Christmas Vacation, Fletcher in Fletch or Fletch Lives, or Ty Webb in Caddyshack. The character that Chase plays so doesn't match his talents that it honestly feels like it was more written in mind for someone from a sitcom of the time like Tim Allen from Home Improvement or Ed O'Neill during Married with Children because these are basically sitcom characters doing sitcom things. Jack Palance is doing his usual growling intense performance, but he did give me some laughs such as his explanation to Robert Davi's character that Norm recently underwent a lobotomy (which probably makes more sense than it should) and the lion's share of what few laughs there are in this film mostly come from Palance.

Cops and Robbersons has a talented cast and isn't painful like some comic misfires, but it's also not nearly funny enough to sustain its paper thin premise that relies on the old staple of the "idiot plot" to keep itself going. The end result is yet another unfortunate misstep in the 90s leg of Chase's career but at least it's more watchable than his late night talk show.

this movie has kept me in stitches every time i see it! i would definitely recommend it to anyone who likes to laugh. Miko Hughes is ADORABLE in this film! An all-around hilarious movie with an interesting plot and comedic characters!

I tell you what, man. When I saw that this film was given a 4.7, I had to speak up. I had to set the record straight- this movie is great. All joking aside.

Yeah, the plot makes about as much sense as Face/Off. But over the years I have not met one person that watched this movie and wasn't repeating lines the next day.

But enough about that. This movie has chemistry between the actors. There is just enough peril to keep the movie serious. It moves a long at a good pace. The dialog is about as funny as one could hope. Each character has some issue that is developed and ultimately resolved, which is not an easy feat with an ensemble cast like this.

Also, this movie is to Jack Palance what True Grit was for John Wayne. Jack Palance's Detective Jake Stone is a caricature of his previous roles as a no-nonsense, cynical, chain-smoking bad-ass.

Then you have Chevy Chase who is as funny as ever. For that matter, I really don't see how somebody that likes the Vacation movies could dislike this film. It's pretty much the same family, only they don't go on vacation. They have some cops come live with them and comedy ensues.

Anybody who gives this movie less than a 6/10 needs to pull the stick out of their rectum.

I accidentally fell upon a showing of this comedy on a night show on TV, and was immediately drawn into the films parody music. I got a good feeling for what's worth to watch. But I had never heard about the movie before. And boy, was I right.

I looked this up on IMDb, after watching what I thought was a charming and hilarious movie, and was baffled about a score of 4,7. I understand this film didn't hit the right spots back in 1994, but I'll tell you: That was wrong then, and it's wrong now. If it felt was right to bash this back in 1994, this is still what should be considered as a gem now.

The film is a typical Chevy Case movie from the 80'ies and 90'ies. It's almost like the Fletch movies or the National Lampoon's best vacation movies. But then, it's also Fletch- director Michael Ritchie. What's worse; this is rated at Ritchie's worst movie. Well, it's so wrong! I laughed way more then I have in many recent movies.

Here Chase is doing a great job of a cops and robbers story, where Chase's strange family, called the Robbersons, is encountered by and awful lot of challenges, as he is when on his best. Jack Palance is great as the old "Dr. Jeckyll and Mister Hyde"-detective, and so is Robert Davi as the scaring and dangerous Osborn, which is staked out from Robbersons house, as their new neighbor. Diane Weist is lovely naive is the wife, and the kids are also great, with extra kudos to Miko Hughes as the youngest son with a Dracula-mania. He is so funny!

This film is stupidly funny. It's silly, and it gets sillier the longer into the film you get, In the good way. It's charming, with hitchcockian mystery music, it's well played, an it's funny without full of foul language, being harassing or embarrassing the wrong way, like many comedies do now.This is plain funny, with stupid persons, which is all quite lovable. In style of "Dumb and dumber" I recommend this for the whole family.