Cop Out - Home Video Review

Downloaded and viewed on the Xbox 360 Zune Marketplace.

Release Date: February 26, 2010

In the special features section of the movie "Live Free or Die Hard" there is a very nice and candid discussion between Bruce Willis and writer/director Kevin Smith. In that discussion Kevin Smith asks Mr. Willis if there were any films he has made where looking back they weren't such great ideas and he was very open and honest about how when you sign on to a film that you go in hoping that it turns out the way the director had envisioned it, but unfortunately that didn't always happen. I bring this up because it is somewhat ironic that Kevin Smith immediately following that interview got Bruce Willis to star in this very sub-par buddy cop movie. Kevin Smith has just added another film to that list for Bruce and unfortunately I believe it is one of the worst films either person has ever been involved with.

Stop me if you have heard this plot anywhere before, Bruce Willis stars as Jimmy Monroe, a cop with an ex-wife, is so broke that he can't afford to pay for his daughter's wedding, and gets suspended for disregarding protocol. Tracy Morgan stars as Paul Hodges, Jimmy's loyal and comical partner that is suspecting of his wife having an affair and isn't very good at playing the "bad cop" due to him re-enacting everything he has every seen in movies before. The plot...well there is some stuff in there about drugs and smuggling but the main storyline of the film is Jimmy trying to get back his stolen baseball card. Yep, you heard that right...a baseball card.

 Look, he's in a cell phone outfit, that's hilarious...sigh.

Jimmy needs that card to pay for his daughter's wedding or the evil new husband to his wife played by Smith regular Jason Lee will pay for it himself (wouldn't him paying for the wedding actually make him a nice guy?). Once Jimmy loses his baseball card both him and Paul go out on the town to retrieve it where hi-jinks ensue. There are other issues the two cops stumble across during their search such as a woman being held hostage in the trunk of a car, a parkour house thief played by Sean William Scott who provides the only humor to be found in the film, and a drug smuggling kingpin. None of that matters though since they are constantly on a quest to retrieve the coveted baseball card.

The biggest question I had during the movie and definitely by the end was why? Why did this movie need to be made? Why did any of these people working on it ever sign on in the first place? There is very little fun to be found here, even Bruce Willis seems like he knows that he is just collecting a paycheck for this one while Tracy Morgan keeps repeating his comic routine from "30 Rock" which gets very tiresome after about 20 minutes. 

 Sean William Scott steals every scene he is in.

The opening scene of the movie gives you every warning sign you need to just turn it off immediately. Eschewing the normal buddy cop setup of a cop getting a new partner they instead opted to have them both already be partners with a history at the beginning (this does not count as original mind you, simply skipping ahead). They must interrogate a criminal for...well they never really say, but that isn't important. What is important is that when Paul enters the interrogation room you are subjected to one of the lamest and most drawn out jokes I have seen in quite some time. It really is painful to sit through, especially since Bruce needs to act like what he is seeing is humorous (Bruce always has been a real fine actor) and the more the movie tries to convince you it is funny the more it hurts.

This film is just painful from beginning to beyond the end with it's non-stop 80's buddy cop cliches (even the soundtrack sounds like a bad synthesizer copy of every buddy cop movie ever made). I have no idea what Kevin Smith was going for here, it definitely was not an homage to those glorious cop movies of the 80's and if it was trying to be a parody it failed miserably. I could sort of see how there might have been a good set up for a parody in there with two cops solving crimes while actually just searching for a baseball card but when the movie tries to get serious it all comes crashing down. Avoid this movie at all costs and I hope that it is forgotten as soon as possible.

AVOID

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