Movie Review: Cop Out

By ROGER MOORE ORLANDO (FLA.) SENTINEL

Posted: February 26, 2010 at 3:59 a.m.

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LITTLE ROCK — “It’s not stealing,” protests New York police Detective Paul Hodges as he readies for his “performance” interrogating a suspect. “It’s called homage.”

Since he’s played by comic Tracy Morgan (TV’s 30 Rock), homage is mispronounced. Since the movie is Cop Out, the “homage” is to ’80s cop movies - a fond remembrance of those jokey, bloody Beverly Hills Cop/ Lethal Weapon romps of Eddie and Mel.

And since the movie was directed (though not written) by fanboy Kevin Smith, Paul’s “homage” rant to a suspect is snippets of movie dialogue - from An Officer and aGentleman and Die Hard, to In the Heat of the Night and Star Wars.

“These are not the ’droids you’re looking for!”

Cop Out is a cop buddy picture that reminds us what awful eye-rollers those movies often were. It has the generic “foreign” villains (Mexicans, this time), the chatterbox “perp” who is arrested and then comes along for the ride (Seann William Scott steals the movie in the Joe Pesci role). It has ’80s action icon Bruce Willis as Detective Jimmy Monroe, playing straight-man to an always over-the-top Morgan.

“White lightning and black thunder!”

But poor plotting, inept staging and slack pacing remind us that Smith is better at riffs than at making functional, wholly realized films.

Willis and Morgan play semicompetent detectives who botch a stakeout, get an informant killed and become mixed up in a plot that involves a stolen Mercedes, a stolen baseball card and a baseball fanatic bad guy (Guillermo Diaz) they can never seem to get the drop on.

Scott is a parkour-practicing burglar who steals a rare card from Jimmy. The cop needs the cash from it so that he - and not the exwife’s second husband (Smith film alumnus Jason Lee, dialing it down) - can pay for his daughter’s wedding. So they chase the thief and shoot up the Mexican mob, even though they’re both “suspended.”

Funny bits interrupt the dead stretches - a hysterical and heavily armed womanprotecting her property while questioning the manhood of New York’s finest, Scott playing the “stop repeating what I say” game and an 11-year-old car thief who curses a blue streak but fears his mamma. As in the rest of the Smith canon, there’s a juvenile fascination with sex - a monologue about monkey sexual practices, for instance.

But there’s a dated and played feel to much of this, from the “Black Betty” to Beastie Boys soundtrack, the jokes that don’t land, and situations and generic characters (Kevin Pollack plays a rival detective) that add nothing tothe film.

If you’ve noticed Smith playing the weight card for victimhood in the media, the movie’s fat jokes will make you grimace. And throwaway lines about YouTube and Wikipedia sound like ’80s guys trying too hard to sound “with it.”

Cop Out is still funnier than the dreadful later Eddie Murphy cop pictures. But it feels like an homage to a period best forgotten, just a chance for all involved to sell out and cash in with a crude comedy that reminds us how bad these particular “good old days” were.

Cop Out78Cast: Bruce Willis, Tracy Morgan, Seann WilliamScott, Jason Lee, Kevin Pollack Director: Kevin Smith Rating: R, for pervasive language including sexual references, violence and brief sexuality Running time: 102 minutes

MovieStyle, Pages 35 on 02/26/2010

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