Cop Out is Neither Fun nor Funny

This film sounded good in theory. I liked the director Kevin Smith’s last two movies, “Clerks 2,” and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” so I was looking forward to his next film. You throw in Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan, who is hilarious in “30 Rock,” and I was totally up for this movie. As it turns out, this film only does sound good in theory.

Smith’s movie is an homage to the buddy cop movies of the 1980’s, minus the humor. The story is ridiculous and hardly worth going into any major detail here.  Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) and Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan) are two long-term police partners who get suspended doing some dumb cop shit. Willis needs money to pay for his daughter’s wedding, so he decides to sell a vintage baseball card. The baseball card gets stolen and Willis and Morgan end up getting involved with a Mexican gang that has Willis’ baseball card. As you can imagine, cray antics ensue after this.

Kevin Smith directs this film like a total amateur. Many of the scenes have no pacing, no humor, they just lie dead on the ground. You want to take a pillow and suffocate these scene to put them out of its misery. The action scenes are also badly edited, which causes these scenes to be  devoid of any excitement, tension, or suspense.

The only times I did laugh was due to Tracy Morgan. The one comedic bit that works involved him and Willis doing a good cop/bad cop routine in a Russian’s house. Seann William Scott, playing a thief, is also very good at being super annoying in the movie. Many of the scenes that are intended to be funny involve Morgan saying something outrageous and Willis giving him a look. I can’t blame Smith for all the lackluster humor in the film. Credit must go the screenwriters, Robb and Mark Cullen. One potential funny bit involves a scene with Morgan interrogating a suspect by saying quotes from such films like, “Jaws” and “The Color Purple.” The humor from this scene in undercut because Smith has to cut back to Willis telling the audience what film the quote is from.

Bruce Willis looks bored out of his mind here. He and Morgan have zero chemistry together. Jason Lee is terrible, Adam Brody is unfunny and Kevin Pollack is given nothing to do. The scenes involving the film’s villain, a Mexican gang leader named Poh Boy (Guillermo Diaz), are cringe-inducing to watch. I’m not sure if I’m suppose to take this guy serious or laugh at him. The entire film has this same problem.

1 1/2 stars