Why does nobody in Hollywood understand the 80′s suck? Yuppies, Wham!, Thatcher, Reagan, AIDS, me being spit out from my mothers cosy womb. All horrible, horrible events. Yet with Nightmare on Elm Street, The A-Team and The Karate Kid all getting revamps the tools of tinsletown think the decade of decadence was a-okay.
Now comes Cop Out, a black/white buddy-cop comedy straight out of the ‘left to gather dust’ mould of Lethal Weapon and 48Hours. More worryingly though, in the clusterfuck to cash on on 80′s nostalgia, they’ve forgotten to add the funny.
NYPD cop Jimmy Monroe (Bruce Willis) is suspended without pay just before his daughter’s wedding, thanks in large part to his loud, brash partner Paul Hodges (Tracy Morgan). On his way to sell a rare baseball card to raise money, Jimmy gets robbed. He and Paul track down the thief and find themselves at the centre of a drug war.
Kevin Smith directs (for the first and hopefully last time) from somebody elses script. This is a man who will happily confess that in the writer/director department, direction isn’t exctly his strong point. Not a good start. But then even a King Midas director couldn’t turn the words on the page into anything not resembling a huge bowl of shit. When the funniest actor is the third lead in American Pie and the funniest scene is a kid getting punched in the nutsack (okay, a kid getting punched in the nutsack would be the funniest thing in any movie) its clear for all to see something has gone terribly wrong.
What went “terribly wrong” is that Robb and Mark Cullen were told at some point in their life that film references (plus explanantions of said references) are the height of comedy gold. Just imagine if Spaced or Shaun Of The Dead ended every reference with “That’s from 2001:A Space Odyssey!” or “You see how we’re all wearing black trenchcoats, that’s just like The Matrix!” and you’ll be somewhere to feeling the pain of having to sit through tired reference after tired reference.
As for the characterisation of the two leads (Bruce and Tracy), the original title of A Couple Of Dicks would have been more appropriate. Willis plays a deadbeat dad who’ll happily step outside of the law for his own interests and Tracy (aiming for Eddie Murphy but landing at Chris Tucker) is a jealous husband who believes spying on his wife with a nanny-cam is a perfectly justifiable action and not at all grounds for divorce.
This ‘possible duality’ of the characters (“look, cops aren’t always good!”) could be forgiven if the film was funny in any way. It’s not, it’s really not. Being thrown off a plane for being too fat won’t be the most embarrasing thing to happen to Kevin Smith this year. Watching Cop Out from beginning to end will be.
