Top Cops

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

'Cop Out' is perhaps Kevin Smith's most 'un-Kevin Smith' film. It lacks the brand of humour his previous works had. Even though he has made his share of bad films next to a few great ones, the jokes usually work. In 'Cop Out' most of them fall flat. The story (if there is one) has no direction at all. The characters are annoying. Supporting characters appear and disappear randomly. In Smith's defence, he wasn't part of the writing department (though he was involved in the editing) and the script is just one big mess. I still wonder why he decided to make this? Even the actors seem to lack interest. Tracy Morgan is completely miscast and he has no chemistry with any of his costars. Actually none of the actors have chemistry. Bruce Willis too is unimpressive. Perhaps he's finally tired of playing the same kind of role over and over again. The title is somewhat right for the movie although I don't think it ever had potential.

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.

Boy this is a hard review to write! Wish I could avoid it, but that'd be a Cop Out, too! I thought Bruce could do no wrong, after ignoring The Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk, and Death Becomes Her and his renewed persona in Pulp Fiction. But alas along comes this...ummm....mess of a film!

Maybe I don't like Tracy's sense of humour. Or maybe I'm tired of the cliched pairings of the "smart" and "dumb" buddy cop in films like Starksy and Hutch, Leathal Weapon, Chips, Bad Boys, R. I. P. D., The Heat, Rush Hour, Bulletproof, Ride Along, 48 Hours, Tango & Cash, and so, so, so many more!!! It gets a LOT repetitive. Or maybe it was the thin-as-paper plot!

Old cop needs money for his daughter's wedding because he doesn't want Jason Lee to pay for it, so he tries selling a valuable item only to be robbed by Stifler himself! Other cop has one liners and stupid faces. Chasing the crook they come across a Mexican cartel's snitch...bada-bing-bada-boo the good guys win by accident!

Still, it has Bruce Willis and Kevin Pollak in it!

This is unbelievable and unbearable, it reaches some new peaks of lame! I can't believe it was not commented as such by more users and I can't believe it scored a 6 out of 10 on IMDb! It is so prehistoric age of the cop movies and it hardly pulls out as a comic movie! The music stinks and it is so Not 2010! I hope this is not the beginning of a whole crappy movie era...The crazy villain who seems to rule the city and has no fear of the cops, the Latina - victim, beautiful and scared...what is the matter with these clichés of the early 80-s? I couldn't wait for the movie to end and I feel sorry for Bruce Willis, hey man, better enjoy your retirement than act in such chaotic remakes of all the old cop movies!